The Parselmouth of Gryffindor
by Achille Talon
Summary: Hermione Granger was born a Parselmouth and arrives at Hogwarts with less trust in authority (after all, muggle science somehow missed snake sentience), and a mission to prove snakes are people too. And Goblins. And Acromantulas. And… Merlin. Hogwarts isn't prepared for this, the Wizarding World isn't prepared for this, and Voldemort is *especially* not prepared for this. ON HIATUS
1. The Muggleborn Parselmouth

**AN INTRODUCTION**

 _ **which it is your prerogative to skip,**_

 _ **though I do not recommend it**_

 _Welcome, reader!_

 _I don't know how you stumbled upon this story — reddit, perhaps? TVtropes? or perhaps you were just browsing fanfiction dot net… — but here's a few ramblings for your consideration before you start reading that insane little tale of mine._

 _"The Parselmouth of Gryffindor" was born of several yearnings._

 _First, I wanted a proper exploration of the ethical implications of snakes' ability to talk in the "Harry Potter" universe, something which I have strangely never really seen before._ _Second, I wished to tell an original story, something nobody had done before, and I think "Parselmouth Hermione" may well be a first. There are a few other creative ideas that will come up as the plot advances._

 _I also wanted to write a plausible version of First Year Hermione as she is described in 'Philosopher's Stone' — an excitable, bossy little girl with a tendancy to babble — which is only too rarely done; stories tend to either make her unsympathetic, or instead idealize her and have her be like her older self from Day One. Considering her different circumstances, my Hermione grew organically from this young, overconfident motormouth, and her older self is not very much like the canonical Hermione at all. How? You'll see._

 _I started this story longer ago than it seems, when I was a lesser writer than I am now (I'm afraid the first few chapters aren't quite up to snuff), and with the intent of it being a "short, episodic sort of thing", as this Author's Note originally stated. 260.000 words later, I… realise I may have changed my mind at some point in the creative process. "The Parselmouth of Gryffindor" is by now set to be a full Seven-Year AU, and being partway through Fifth Year as I write this, I'm reasonably hopeful that we'll get there._

 _"The Parselmouth of Gryffindor" really is one story at the end of the day, much more than the canon books or some other Seven-Year AUs; hence why I continued posting it as one stories rather than splitting it by 'books'. Nevertheless, if it would be of interest to anyone, here's a Table of Contents of the seven de-facto 'books'. Note, firstly, that by a strict definition of the word, they may contain some spoilers; and secondly, that the chapter numbers given are, for easy navigation, ffnet's, not the ones I actually use in my Interlude-laden numbering scheme._

 _ **" Hermione Granger and the Snake in the Walls"** — FIRST YEAR — Chapter 1 to Chapter 5 — Hermione comes to Hogwarts, makes many friends (including a certain ancient monster), investigates a cursed turban, and utterly refuses to get involved in any of that Philosopher's Stone foolishness._

 _ **" Hermione Granger and the Friendly Boggart"** — SECOND YEAR — Chapter 6 to Chapter 16 — It's a brand new year at Hogwarts! Hogwarts, where Diaries talk, the Defence Professor is insane, and things catch sentience like other people catch colds. Not to mention a certaine scaped Marauder is on the prowl, and the Children of Aragog grow restless…_

 _ **" Hermione Granger and the Wizarding World"** — THIRD YEAR — Chapter 18 to Chapter 37 — Third Year spells new responsabilities for Hermione… No, not the electives, though she *is* taking thema all, and there is nothing more convenient than a Time-Turner. But when your new Defence teacher's a werewolf and your Minister is an imbecile, sometimes, you have to take matters into your own hands. _

_**" Hermione Granger and the Lost Souls"** — FOURTH YEAR — Chapter 38 to Chapter 66 — Hermione discovers that, Time-Turner or not, redeeming a teacher who caused World War II, dealing with a Dark Lady of Hufflepuff, leading a country, and egg-hunting for lost pieces of an evil overlord's soul is rather too much. Not to mention a so-called Heir of Voldemort is running around, rallying old Death Eaters… and just what is up with these headaches of Harry's, anyway?_

 _ **" Hermione Granger and the Triwizard Tournament"** — FIFTH YEAR — Chapter 67 onwards; ongoing — The world looks to have had enough of Hermione's peculiar brand of insanity, and, under deafening cheers from Dolores Umbridge , she is stripped of her wand and shipped off to Azkaban. Well, good try, everyone, but she returns to the mainland with a new Dementor best-friend, all ready to take place in the new and improved Triwizard Tournament she and Ron Weasley helped design. Unfortunately, so are the Dark Lady of Hufflepuff, an owl, and… a second Boy Who Lived?!_

 _ **" Hermione Granger and the Laws of Magic"** — SIXTH YEAR — Upcoming — Working hard in the International Confederation of Wizards to fix problems like the ethically indefensible Statute of Secrecy and the discriminatory Wand Ban, Hermione and friends must also deal with the legacy of the Flamels, as well as the education of a young and rather distressingly naive Basilisk… oh, and did I mention Dumbledore's getting married and there's a Goblin Rebellion brewing? _

_**" Hermione Granger and the Timeless War"** — SEVENTH YEAR — Upcoming — With the Death Eaters and Horcruxes all rounded up, and the I.C.W. and Ministry both rebuilt from the ground up, things seem, at last, to be going in the right direction. "Right direction" is a very relative term, though, and when she discovers the Department of Mysteries' new findings in the field of magical chronology, Hermione must cope with the unsettling revelation that none of her adventures were meant to happen, solve a riddle that has been hiding in plain sight all her life — and do all of that before time runs out… literally. _

_…_

 _So that's that. The last two summaries are, of course, subject to any number of changes when I actually get to writing them._

 _Oh, and two somewhat perfunctory, but very important notes: first, I of course do not own the Wizarding World or any other characters and concepts borrowed from J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" franchise (though I do own the original parts of this plot and whatever new things I introduce to my version of the Harry Potter universes). Mrs Rowling's really terribly nice to let us all play around in her sandbox. And second, as you'll soon find out, I often plead my readers for reviews. I'm not nearly so desperate as I make myself sound, big ham that I am, but neither am I indifferent to feedback, good or bad. It keeps me writing._

 _Barring incidents, "The Parselmouth of Gryffindor" updates about once a week, though on which day is anyone's guess. Sometimes I skip a week or two, but I'll never go longer than a month without officially notifying you that I'm going on hiatus (and that, so far, has happened once). _

_With all that said, there only remains for me to hope that you'll have as much fun reading this story as I'm having writing it! See you around!_

 ** _THE PARSELMOUTH OF GRYFFINDOR_**

 **Chapter I: The Muggleborn Parselmouth**

Little Hermione Jean Granger could talk to snakes.

It would, perhaps, not be fair to say that was her one odd feature, though she was the 11-year-old daughter of a perfectly ordinary pair of dentists, living in perfectly ordinary London in the utterly remarkable year that was 1991. After all, Hermione was odd in a myriad of other ways. She was odd for how big and curly her hair was, and for how large her two front teeth were, and for how squeaky her voice was, and for how many books she read a week, and for the confidence with which she would often scold imaginary ghosts of the books' authors, when they appeared to her to have gotten something wrong.

But for all that some children (those who didn't make fun of her) and most grown-ups respected her for her intelligence and her academic memory, and for all that she was proud of those, too — that secret talent of hers — talking to snake — had been her greatest personal pride ever since she'd discovered it as a toddler.

After all, there were many other precocious students in the world, whereas talking to snake was _special_. Hermione had looked in every library she was allowed to go, and there were no records of anyone ever speaking to a snake at all. In fact, the thicker books on snake biology said snakes were actually quite deaf. This had made the snake she'd told giggle like mad. Well, 'giggle'… it was more of a hiccoughy sort of hiss. But Hermione's gift allowed her to hear it for the giggle it was.

Her parents, the Doctors Daniel Timothy Granger and Sally Helen Granger ( _née_ Verdant), were the only grownups who knew about this and believed her. They were, of course, extremely confused; more confused than Hermione thought the situation really warranted. (So what if snakes could talk, and only some people could understand it? Foreigners talked in strange and inexplicable tongues all the time, and only some very learned people could understand what they said; no one made a big deal out of _that_.) But confused or not, the Grangers loved their daughter no less for it.

And a few months before their daughter's eleventh birthday, they received the first strange visit of many to come.

It was a strange woman wearing an old-fashioned (no, scratch that, an _old_ , though it didn't look well-worn) dark red dress. She had her graying hair up in a bun and wore a pair of old, impeccably-clean glasses with gold rimming.

Hermione answered the door, as she always did when her parents were farther away from the entryway than she was:

"Good morning, madam, what do you want?" she asked, unafraid to sound twee — clients usually liked it. And if there were children present, it usually eased their angst to see there was another kid at the dentist's and she was all smiles.

There were no children present, just the strange woman.

"Ah, you must be… Hermione Granger," said the woman, taking care to pronounce the name correctly; she had a slight Scottish accent, and Hermione quite liked the way it made her name sound. "Good day to you too. My name is Professor Minerva McGonagall, and there is something of importance I must discuss with your parents."

"Oh, is it about your teeth?" asked Hermione. "They look fine to me. And where did you find this dress? What are you a professor of? Why…"

"Dear!" said Sally Granger's voice behind her, cutting her off. "We talked about this. Curiosity is a good and useful things, but that doesn't mean you can just swarm strangers with questions."

"Madam, I do apologize for my daughter's outburst", said Sally's husband, ever the formal practician, as he strode to the door in long measured steps. "I am Doctor Daniel Granger. What is your business?"

"As it happens, Dr Granger", said McGonagall, holding out a hand to shake, "it concerns young Hermione herself. May I come in?"

"You could, but I don't think you'd want to," Hermione observed. "This is a dentist's practice, not a living room; if it is privacy you want, you'll find just as much here than further into the building."

"Very well," said the Professor. "Let us get to the point, then… Doctor Granger, you must have noticed… peculiar events happening around young Hermione. On occasion. Things you couldn't quite explain, though their reality was beyond all doubt."

"Did we ever!" laughed Hermione before her parents could silence her.

Powerless, they nodded.

"Very good, very good!" said McGonagall slightly. "I see you have not taken issue with… Oh, and why would you, anyway? What are a few flickering light and broken objects… The other Muggles do fuss over the smallest things, don't they?"

"Lights? Objects?" asked Mr Granger, who was growing more and more confused. "…what was that about mugs?"

"Oh…" Hermione said for her part, not a little disappointed. "I thought you were talking about my ability to… Oh, of course you wouldn't know. I'm sorry, I got too excited."

"Your ability to…?" the Professor prodded. "Whatever it is, it _may_ still be relevant. The gift can manifest in many forms."

Giddy at the prospect of telling someone, Hermione leaned in conspiratorily, not quite aware that considering she was much shorter than the person she was talking to, this meant she ended up further away from her than she'd started.

"I can talk to snakes," she whispered.

Professor McGonagall's demeanor shifted rather remarkably.

"Talking to snakes?! Indeed?"

There was interest now, even fascination, in Professor McGonagall's voice; you could tell, because her Scottish accent had just gotten a lot stronger.

"Oh, hm, yes, we…" stammered Mrs Granger, not knowing what to say. They'd always been very careful not to let anyone know about their daughter's mysterious power. Not that it was anything to be ashamed of — but they wouldn't have their child growing up swarmed with reporters, scientists and other assorted crackpots, not before she was fourteen at _least_.

"Don't worry, Dr Granger," the Professor said in a practiced soothing tone. "Pars- that is to say, talking to snakes — is also considered a sign of what I am talking about… though quite an unusual one. Very well. Simply put, and I beg you, do not be alarmed… your daughter, Hermione… is a witch."

Through the flood of questions that followed, it surfaced that Professor McGonagall was the Deputy Headmistress of the British Isles' only school of Magic; that Hermione could study in that school if she so wished, _for free_ (that bit did more to sell Daniel on the idea than anything else); that Magic had nothing to do with demonic summonings of any sort, and was an inherent and morally neutral talent; that there was a whole secret world of wizards out there; and that any further queries could be answered by the books Hermione would soon be purchasing in London's wizarding district under the Professor's own guidance.

* * *

McGonagall led the young witch to the 'Leaky Cauldron' the very next day. Her parents would have loved to come, of course, but they had some clients scheduled to come that day. They reasoned there would always be time to discover the new world and magic, whereas there was money to be made today. To be precise, that had been Daniel Granger's reasoning.

"Why is the entrance to Diagon Alley disguised as a pub?" Hermione asked as they walked through the crowded establishment. "Is it _really_ a pub, or just a disguise? Does it belong to the Ministry of Magic? If not, does the Ministry pay the actual owner for the use they make of—"

"Miss Granger! _Calm yourself!_ " tampered McGonagall. "I reiterate that all of your questions will be answered either at Hogwarts itself, or in the numerous books you will no doubt be buying today."

"Oh yes!" said Hermione eagerly. "Will we soon get to the bookshop, Professor?"

"Uhm… As you will no doubt spend the longest time there, I would advise you to save the best for last, so to speak. Here, let us buy some proper wizarding robes for you!" said McGonagall, pointing to _Madam Malkin_ 's with evident relief and ushering the girl in before Hermione could even ask about what she meant, exactly, by 'robes', 'wizarding' and 'proper'.

There, she found herself measured by a still, silent woman and eventually offered several sizes of a set of black robes and pointy hats. She payed quite a few pounds for the clothes, but Madam Malkin assured her in a quiet voice that the robes had several enchantments on them to justify the price.

Next stop, McGonagall said, was Gringotts Bank, where she could exchange her pounds for wizarding money, as only _Madam Malkin_ ' _s_ accepted Muggle coin.

Oh, really? Wizards had their own currency? What was it called? What was its exchange rate? Was it the same for wizards in other countries? _Were_ there wizards in other countries?

Hermione's economical questions were however soon drowned out when she came across the bank-tellers.

"Oh my God. _They're not human!_ " she squeaked in surprise. "You didn't tell me there were other species in the wizarding world… Oh dear oh dear, what are they, exactly? Do they speak English?"

Somewhat amused, Professor McGonagall answered:

"They are Goblins, Miss Granger. They do have their own nation and language, but of course the bank-tellers in Gringotts are fluent, or nearly so, in most European languages and some besides."

Hermione gasped but then regained her decorum and strode to a free desk. She bowed briefly.

"Excuse me, sir?" she asked as politely as she could manage.

The goblin — an old, withered creature with yellowed teeth and claws, wearing silver-branched spectacles — leaned towards the young girl.

"Yes…?" he acquiesced.

"I'm sorry, sir, but my name is Hermione Granger." (She bowed again.) "I'm a muggleborn and I would like to exchange two hundred pounds' worth into galleons, please." (Another bow.)

Staring intently at her, the old goblin extended a clawed, skeletal hand in which she placed the bank notes. Almost immediately, he gave her a small bag of heavy wizarding coins in return.

"Thank you very much — sir." said Hermione, bowing again.

A few months earlier, a rude boy in her class had joked she 'probably didn't know any fairy tales', and, taking the insult very seriously, she'd read up all she could on fairies. The point was that many books said goblins were a type of fae, and _all_ the books agreed it was best to always be polite when dealing with the fae.

While she trotted off to meet a stunned McGonagall, the old goblin whispered in Gobbledegook to his colleague sitting next to him:

 _[That witch is barmy. Does she think I'm a hippogriff or something?]_

* * *

Together, Hermione and her Professor bought a cauldron and several ladles, other potion supplies, _many_ rolls of parchments, as many quills, and a telescope — none of which was particularly interesting. Afterwards, she was finally allowed into _Flourish and Blotts_ , the magical bookshop, where she bought nearly everything she could on magic, goblins, and wizarding society.

She looked all she could but did not find anything about snakes, and eventually asked Mr Blotts about that strange omission. Blotts, who didn't seem to understand quite why Hermione would be asking for such a thing, gave her the distinct impression that wizards didn't like snakes much better than normal folk did. They seemed just as ready to assume snakes were "dark" and "evil" by nature. Too bad… At least, she ascertained, in the process, that people like her — people who could talk to snakes — Parselmouths — were uncommon even in the Wizarding World. That she was still special even now brought her no small amounts of satisfaction.

After one last look through the indefensibly-snakeless "S" shelf, she prepared to go out—

—and immediately found herself faced with the obstacle of the sheer _weight_ of the pile of books she'd just paid for.

"… This is so unfair," she raged silently, staring at the heap. "Everyone knows intellectuals and weightlifters don't have very much overlap. Why can't they design books that get _lighter_ the more you pile them up? Ugh."

She kept mumbling to herself for long enough that Blotts began to stare at her very very oddly, and finally decided to call for help.

* * *

McGonagall, Hermione decided, had to be a very good witch, as she managed to create a self-powered wagon for transporting her purchases. Yes, she was definitely looking forward to having that woman as her teacher. They made light conversation as they continued their way; McGonagall did not seem to think it was a very good idea for her to visit the Magical Menagerie, and Hermione humored her, giving it a wide berth.

(It was painfully clear that the wizards must sell snakes there, and that the Professor feared Hermione would react badly to this knowledge. Considerate of her, though aa bit naive — Hermione had hardly been born yesterday, and Muggles sold snakes, too. It _was_ technically slavery, yes, and some of Hermione had always felt as though she _should_ object; but the inescapable fact was that all the shop snakes she'd ever talked to were very happy with their fate, which guaranteed them a stable life and steady feedings, and cared little for abstract concepts like 'freedom'. So she didn't worry about it too much.)

She was then asked to go to a faded boutique called _Ollivanders_ to buy 'the most essential piece of equipment' — a wand.

"Ah… a new Muggleborn, is that it, Minerva?" asked Mr Ollivander, _without_ greeting either of them, as he emerged from behind a shelf.

"Indeed, Garrick. May I introduce — Miss Hermione Granger. Miss Granger is an eager mind… and a Parselmouth" said McGonagall with a peculiar tone of voice.

"Is she now?" said Ollivander, his pale, already twinkling eyes becoming even brighter. "How fascinating! How very interesting indeed. You were right to tell me… and I, who haven't equipped a Parselmouth since… oh, since… ah, you wouldn't know the boy… that is to say, you wouldn't know his name… but the point, Miss Granger, is it was more than fifty years ago. Now…"

With a flick of his own wand, the wandmaker sent several strange tape measurers floating about Hermione, and he began explaining:

"Now, you see, the wand chooses the witch, Miss Granger, not the other way around. It's not always clear why, but—"

"Excuse me", asked Hermione, "but if the wand chooses the witch, why are all these tests necessary?"

Ollivander looked like he'd accidentally swallowed a porcupine.

"Ah, uhm, this reminds me. Minerva, the choosing of the wand is a private event, especially for someone so special… if you would kindly wait outside…"

Somewhat surprised, the Professor left the shop.

"It is rare that a student should ask such a thing", said Ollivander, his eyes twinkling. "I am no Sorting Hat, but I daresay you may do well in Ravenclaw, young Parselmouth… Alright, I'll tell you. You see… there _is_ an art in helping a witch or wizard find their first wand; if I didn't have a rough ideas what wands to suggest, why, the choosing of the wand would take hours."

"Then if it's so innocent, then why did you ask Professor McGonagall to leave us alone?" asked Hermione, curious.

"Well, there is an art, it's true, but it's all in the feelings — the tapes are just a little bit of decorum. I'm afraid if people knew that wandlore is not nearly so scientific as I make it out to be, they wouldn't listen to a word I say, and instead I'd have to deal with excited youngsters pouncing on the wands in my shelves. And I do so enjoy my quiet little monologues…"

Hermione, pleased to have found out something Professor McGonagall had obviously never noticed, readily agreed to keep this nice Mr Ollivander's secret, and they moved on to finding her a wand.

"Now let me see… The mind of a Ravenclaw, the independence of a Gryffindor… and something of a Slytherin too; you did find out one of my secrets moments after meeting me… not to mention the Parseltongue, of course… although…"

So saying, Ollivander was running his hands over the numerous wands in his possession.

"Perhaps this?" he said, holding out a light-colored wand of about average length, before he proudly explained the wand's properties: "Vine wood, dragon heartstring core, 10¾ inches, a powerful wand for one with hidden depths and an aptitude to learn."

Hermione took the wand in her little hands and flicked it. A few sparks flew out, but she felt some sort of resistance — a bit like trying to run in sand. She said so.

"Hmmm. Yes. Were you not a Parselmouth, I think this would be the one, but… oh, yes, a Parselmouth after all, why not? I was keeping it for… but here, try this one."

Ollivander had drawn a dusty-looking wand from the back of the farthest shelf.

"Holly and Phoenix Feather… Unusual combination, but a powerful wand indeed… the last Parselmouth that came to my shop bought the wand's brother, you see, so I wouldn't be surprised…"

"Brothers? How can wands be 'brothers'?" asked Hermione derisively. "Wands are man-made wooden objects!" she explained further, simultaneously fighting back laughter and patronizing the old wizard.

"Miss Granger", said the man, obviously ruffled. "Two wands are said to be 'brothers' when they share cores taken from the same magical creature."

"Oh…" apologized Hermione. "I'm sorry. I'll try it then."

She took the wand and tried to give it a wave. Instead of sparkles, little bolts flew off the tip of the wand and it began to smoke a bit.

"Oh, dear me, no, no, not at all", muttered Ollivander, snatching the wand away and placing it back in its native drawer, looking a tad disappointed.

Three wands later, however, she obtained a working wand, of walnut and dragon heartstring, 11 inches. It was still not a perfect match (Ollivander lamented he had no Horned Serpent horns in stock), but it was acceptable and still the best out of the set. Besides, Hermione did have other things to do today (mostly reading) and it was getting late. She decided she could buy a new wand later on if this one really didn't do, and by then it'd be a nice plus to have the first wand as a spare.

Hermione politely waved goodbye to Ollivander and got out to find her Professor had turned into a cat and was contemplating a mouse with obvious interest.

"Oh, Professor, it would be terribly nice of you to change back", Hermione whispered (she didn't want to be seen talking to a cat if it turned out she was mistaken and this wasn't Minerva McGonagall).

She was saved the embarrassment when McGonagall reluctantly let go of the rodent and shifted back into a middle-aged Scottish woman.

"So. I trust you have purchased a fitting wand?"

"Oh yes, it was very interesting. And now, could you take me home? I have quite a bit of background reading to do."

"Fine. Now, let's test your memory, young witch. Do you remember the way to the Leaky Cauldron from here?"

"Of course, Professor, but I really would like to go home early, and my legs _are_ rather tired… Couldn't we Apparate?"

Conversations with snakes had taught Hermione that there was nothing to be gained in tiring yourself out when there was another, perfectly good, lazy option. Apparation — the method of magical teleportation McGonagall had mentioned in their little improvised Q&A the previous day — sounded absolutely wonderful in that respect.

"Well, I suppose I can take you in Side-Along Apparation, if you insist." said McGonagall.

Hermione gripped McGonagall's free hand — she had her other one holding the moving trolley — and in a cracking sound, she felt herself be twisted through space-time and then zapped back into conventional three-dimensional space in the back of the Granger family's garden. It was all very interesting, but Hermione nonetheless hurried to the bathroom immediately under McGonagall's covertly amused glare, the enchanted trolley full of books still trailing behind her obediently.

* * *

After two months spent frantically reading up on magic and on wizarding society, Hermione was dropped off at King's Cross Station by Daniel and Sally Granger. She quickly climbed into the Express, McGonagall's surprisingly resilient enchanted trolley (now loaded with her trunk rather than her books, though most of said books were of course contained _in_ the trunk) on her heels, and found herself a free, comfy compartment about midway through the train.

As she set to work, skimming through _Hogwarts, A History_ for the fourth time — it did seem the most relevant volume aside from her course-books proper — she only barely noticed the train start moving.

A little while later, a shy-looking boy peeked in.

"I'm sorry, my name's Neville and I lost my toad… Have you seen him?"

"No, I'm afraid not. What sort of toad is it?" she asked him back, her voice as bossy and practical as her father's.

"I don't know… About this big?" answered Neville, making vague, unhelpful gestures with his stubby little hands.

"I think we could use a Summoning Spell then. I read about it last week. Here", she said, correcting his grip on his wand, "the incantation is _Accio_. Ah- _kee-_ oh, you see? And you swish your wand like this. Oh, and we'd better do it in the corridor."

Neville was dragged into the corridor and, under Hermione's firm stare (which rather reminded him of his gran's, scarily enough), he was forced to try out the spell. The slight whistle of a spell being cast was _heard_ , but a few sparks flew off the tip of Neville's wand, just like what Hermione had seen on some of the mismatched wand she'd tried at Ollivanders. No toad appeared, either.

"Hmm. I'll try it", said Hermione confidently, inwardly upset that her idea hadn't worked. " _Accio_ Neville's toad!"

This time, all signs pointed to the spell having been accurately cast, but again nothing happened.

"Well, I suppose he's out of range, or restrained. We'll just have to go through the whole train" Hermione said, again covering up her frustration.

The first compartment they tried had green leather-covered seats and was inhabited by three rude boys. Their leader was a pale, blonde-haired little wizard with a pointed chin and a sour expression. He'd asked for her last name before she'd even finished her question, and, after she'd refused, consequently refused to acknowledge her presence any further.

Others were more polite, but not particularly more helpful for it. In the end they got to the very last compartment in the whole train, which housed two boys — one of whom bore a lightning scar on his forehead.

"I'm sorry, but have you seen a toad? Neville here has lost one, and we suspect it may be crouching somewhere in a compartment."

"No, sorry", said the other boy, a thin red-head whom Hermione thought looked rather cute. "Neville already came by earlier."

Hermione glared at Neville, who helplessly shrugged. Nothing needed to be said, his look clearly conveyed: _I did try to tell you, but you just stepped right past me and opened the door, because you're bossy and overconfident._ At least, that's how Hermione interpreted it. To escape the uncomfortable realization that she'd made a mistake yet again, the witch latched onto the first conversation topic she found. The boys had their magic wands in and, the red-head pointing his in the direction of a shabby-looking rat on his lap.

"Oh, are you doing magic?" she babbled. "I've only tried a few spells for the moment — I did have so many things to do — read and learn — I know all of my course-books by heart of course, the important parts anyway, I hope it will be enough —"

At the stares she received from the three other children, Hermione finally realized that she'd slipped again.

"Oh. Hm." she finished awkwardly. "So my name is Hermione Granger. What are yours?"

"I'm Ron Weasley," said the read-head. "And that's Harry."

"Harry Potter", Harry completed.

"Oh! I did think it was you, but it would have been terribly rude to ask, wouldn't it? Would you have minded? Do…"

"Oh, no it's okay", Harry interrupted, trying to stop Hermione before she went off again and choked to death because she forgot to take a breath.

"Ah, uh, alright. …What spell were you trying?"

"A charm to turn Scabbers' fur yellow. It doesn't really work though."

"Oh, a color-changing charm? That's rather advanced, you know, for someone who's never been to Hogwarts. Of course, I'm one to talk — I did try that Summoning Charm — but there's value in ambition, my father always says so; so you see, you don't have to feel bad if it doesn't work. In fact, I'd rather say it was clever of you to try. It's always good to test one's limits, and that is what my _mother_ always says. Not about magic, of course — she's not a witch, you know, nobody is in my family, Professor McGonagall's visit was ever such a surprise…"

And so the conversation went on throughout the trip, going from babble to babble and topic to topic. Ron and Harry appeared to think she was a bit weird, but Hermione was used to it, and the longer they were together, the more the boys began to see her as the _right_ , endearing kind of weird, which was about as good as a know-it-all who spoke to snakes could hope for, in Hermione's opinion. Not that she'd mentioned that _particular_ talent to her new friends yet, but then, she had just met them today. It could wait.


	2. The School of Magic

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Some more 'I don't own this' obviousness, blah blah. Moving on — I'm actually quite happy with how this story is going! On top of this one, I've got another chapter almost done, hopefully I can put it out next week. Can I also take a moment to recommend two other stories to read if you like my work — 'Parselbrat', my main inspiration for starting this story, and 'Hermione Granger and the Serpent's Renaissance', apparently the only other Parselmouth!Hermione out there. Though it cheats a little by having 'Hermione' actually be a reincarnated Salazar Slytherin posing as her, it's not a bad story at all. On an another note, people have asked about ships in this story. Not to play Captain Obvious here, but Hermione is 12 years old at the moment. I don't foresee any particular pairing in the future, we'll see how things go, but for now it's the farthest thing from my mind. And now, on with the show!_

 **Chapter II - The School of Magic**

Harry and Ron kept a tight watch on Hermione to keep her from bursting with more questions as they passed through the unnaturally-still lake under the guidance of the gigantic Keeper of the Keys, Rubeus Hagrid. They entered the Great Hall and the boys began marveling at the 'open ceiling' before she reminded them that it was just a spell (honestly!).

A group of misty, pale people flew down to look at the new arrivals. While many students shrieked and quaked in fear, Hermione exclaimed with a wide smile:

"Ghosts!"

She did intend to see some as soon as possible, ever since she'd read about them, but she hadn't dared hope to see such an assortment of spooks on her very first day. Hogwarts really _was_ wonderful. She saw, however, that Harry and Ron weren't reacting so well to the attention of the obviously well-meaning ghost of a rotund monk, whom Hermione guessed must the 'Fat Friar' mentioned in the official Hogwarts history book.

"Oh, honestly, boys. Ghosts couldn't touch a hair on your head if they _wanted_ to."

The Fat Friar turned his big-cheeked face towards her and said:

"I appreciate the help, young witch, it's a shame really that nobody ever truly listens to me at first. But while you're mostly in the right, I wouldn't say all of us are — _harmless_ , exactly."

So saying, the Friar shot a heavy look at the ghost of a gaunt, chained man whose jacket was soaked in blood. Hermione was less sensitive about blood than most children (from having talked to so many snakes who considered it a delicacy), but just the look, no, the _snarl_ on the bloody man's face was enough to send a chill down her spine. Fortunately, McGonagall shooed away the specters before Ron and Harry could scream, and she began explaining the Sorting Hat to them, just before the Hat itself completed the story — in song. In awful, awful song.

The Sorting went alphabetically and so it wasn't a long wait before Hermione's turn came. She was very interested in the Hat (wizards could create _artificial minds_?) on top of her curiosity about her House, and she eagerly jammed the Hat on her head to see what would happen.

"Ah! Oh! Hello! Or should I say — { _Hello?_ }" said a voice inside her head.

{ _You speak Parseltongue?_ } asked Hermione in surprise — too surprised to stop and consider how she'd spontaneously _thought_ her answer at the Hat instead of saying it aloud.

{ _Of course I do, miss Granger. Each Founder copied part of their mind into the enchantments that became me, and surely you have read that Salazar Slytherin was a Speaker? Yes, I see you have._ }

{ _Oh, I see._ } answered the girl. { _That's very interesting, Mr Hat._ }

"Oh, just 'Hat' will do", said the Hat, switching back to English. "Well now… where to put you?… Not in Hufflepuff, that's for sure — of course, is this were a hundred years ago, I'd put you in Slytherin, but being a muggleborn in the Dungeons these days is, well, hazardous. Hmm. A brilliant academic mind, of course, Ravenclaw is an obvious solution… but you have a good and brave heart, too! What an interesting case you are, Miss Granger, how very interesting indeed…"

"I'm sorry," asked Hermione, doing her best to render a chuckle in thought, "but are you friends with Mr Ollivander?"

"I assume you mean Garrick Ollivander? No, I haven't spoken to that boy since I Sorted him… I did get along rather well with his great-great-great-uncle Roderick, however."

"Oh. Alright." said Hermione. Eager to diver the Hat's attention from why she'd asked the question (on second thought, she realized the poor thing might get offended, even though she didn't mean any harm by it really), she asked: "So… where will you sort me?"

"Oh! Yes, yes, you're right, Sorting… I do so miss conversation… the Headmaster always has so much to do, and so few students really talk to me… did you know it's been 87 years since someone began their conversation with me with 'Good morning, how are you?' Ah, young people these days — and believe me, _I_ would know…"

"Hat. _Sorting_."

"Yes, yes, coming, coming… well, it's a hard pick, but I think I'll go ahead and wish you the best of time in — GRYFFINDOR!"

A jolly Hermione Granger walked to her newly-picked House Table under polite applause and the approving looks of her two new friends. She noticed the Headmaster and Professor McGonagall's eyes following her with acute attention all the way to her seat, which she attributed to her Parselmouth abilities, which could understandably have made them expect her to go to Slytherin.

As the Sorting went on, Harry and Ron joined her in Gryffindor, and so did Neville, whom the newly-formed Trio shamefully realized they had somehow ignored for the end of the way on the Express, caught up in their own conversation. (On the plus side, he seemed to have recovered his toad while they weren't looking.) They made up for their mistake by congratulating him warmly for making it to Gryffindor despite his expectations, glaring at the few who started to snicker when the boy forgot to take off the Sorting Hat until he was halfway to his table. Hermione was especially insistent.

"Believe me," she explained, "the Sorting Hat's very clever, but it is _such_ a gossip. It's probably the Hat's fault, not Neville's."

* * *

Hermione ended up sharing a dormitory room with a shy girl called Sally-Anne Perks. Sally-Anne was a muggle-born, but this wasn't enough common grounds for her and Hermione to really start getting along.

The Common Room was homely and warm — but only when it wasn't under assault from Fred and George, Ron's identical older brothers, who were the most colossal pranksters Hermione (or Harry) had ever met. It was a wonder Ron had survived in the same house as them for eleven years, especially since they seemed so determined to drive him in particular completely round the bend.

For instance, in the very first week, Ron had woken up with green and silver fingernails, the very day after he'd vocally expressed his distaste for all things Slytherin. Hermione thought it was especially hypocritical of the Twins when they themselves didn't seem to like Slytherins very much, either. She managed to cancel the color-changing charms with a spell she'd read ahead on, _Finite Incantatem_. For some reason, Ron glared icily at the twins but insisted not to report them to the prefect, Percy. Something to do with all four of them being siblings, she guessed.

The next day, Fred and George's noses were flashing pink, purple and green intermittently, while their hair had turned curly and yellow. Ron burst out laughing as soon as he saw them frantically casting every counter-spell they knew, to no avail.

"What _happened_ to them?" asked Hermione.

"Eh, they probably botched a spell working on their latest project", Ron suggested with a faint smile. "It happens."

After exchanging a quick glance, the Twins nodded:

"Yup, definitely that."

"One must admit their mistakes, after all."

"My thoughts exactly, brother mine."

"Indeed. Now we'll laugh at the idea that if not for a little miscalculation, you'd have been the one flashing rainbow, Ron."

"So when you think about it, Ronniekins, the joke is really on you!"

The Twins then proceeded to perform the most abominable 'laugh' imaginable, each saying 'Hah' in turns, slowly, gratingly. After that, they retreated to the Great Hall to have breakfast (and hopefully find an older student to dispel the enchantments for them).

"Alright", said Hermione in her bossiest voice. "Seamus, you're Ron's dorm-mate. Did he get up tonight? Because the Twins really aren't good liars."

"Nope!" said Seamus. "You're right o'course, it's clear the Twins were pranked and they don't want to admit it. But it can't a'been Ron."

"Oh. Never mind," Hermione thanked him, internally annoyed she'd missed her guess.

* * *

Meanwhile, lessons had begun as well, and from the first week Hermione decided she would really be slacking off is she didn't make top of the class by the end of the year. Of course, Professor Binns wasn't too bright and Professor Snape obviously thought teaching kids worked like training attack dogs, but compared to how much she'd read ahead the curriculum itself was laughably easy.

Perhaps the oddest class was Defence Agains the Dark Arts, taught by a stuttering young man called Professor Quirinius Quirrell. He wore a ridiculous turban that doubled the size of his head. Harry got visibly sick just looking at the thing, and Hermione had to admit it was rather gaudy, but the worst thing about him was how badly he taught. His stutter was so bad that by the time he finished the first sentence about some monster or dark curse, so much time had passed that he moved on to the next one without any further explanations. To boot, their great defender against the Dark Side was an absolute coward, who squeaked like a mouse at the mere idea of a Red Cap and nearly fainted when a Slytherin mentioned something called the Cruciatus Curse. Considering how even normal wizards seemed to react to the name of the Dark Lord Voldemort, Hermione was thankful Harry was too busy pretending to be sick from the ugly turban to start ranting about using that name (as he was surprisingly prone to do).

Three weeks in, Ron, escorted by Harry (still mock-sick from the gaudy turban), told Hermione after class:

"We really need to speak to McGonagall about this!"

Hermione nodded vigorously. She could get by on the course books alone, but Quirrell _was_ grossly incompetent.

After a brief conversation, McGonagall assured Hermione that Quirrell had been a brilliant student and that he was still recovering from a traumatic encounter with a man-eating Hag in Albania. She expected he would get better and better over time.

Hermione waited one more month, but by the time of the Halloween Feast, Quirrell was still blabbering incoherently rather than following any sort of lesson plan. Harry, as annoyed as he was, had begun claiming that the turban was not just sickening — it was a dark artifact that messed with Quirrell's brain and was obviously trying to possess him too, through his scar, you see?

While Quirrell remained the same appalling wreck, the prank war between Fred and George and the still untraceable Ron had only gotten funnier. Ron had found himself sprouting pink feathers at dinner, followed by Fred and George waking up with large rat-like tails, knotted together for good measure. In retaliation, the Twins had somehow forwarder their brother's Quidditch magazine subscription to the notoriously Quidditch-hating Professor Snape, to which Ron had answered by arranging for the Twins to receive detention with Snape for a week: their cauldron had spontaneously blown up in their face in the next Potions Class, and Ron's satisfied smirk left no doubt he was to blame — never mind that he was nowhere near the Dungeons at the time.

Meanwhile, they'd finally begun actual spell-casting in Charms Class and Ron, under Hermione's advice, had managed to levitate his feather on the first try. A beaming Professor Flitwick suggested the three friends go and help Neville, who was having trouble casting the spell at all. It was obvious his lack of confidence translated into an inability to concentrate properly on _wanting_ his feather to fly, a situation made much worse by his disobedient, rebellious wand.

* * *

The Halloween Feast took a turn fro the weird when Professor Quirrell, surprisingly alert, warned the Hall that there was a troll in the dungeons before falling in a heap on the hard stone floor. Dumbledore ordered the students to go back to their common rooms. Professor Snape complained that the Slytherin Common Room was, in fact, in the dungeons, and he and his student body stayed in the Great Hall instead.

Unnoticed amongst the Slytherin crowd, Hermione, Ron and Harry were lagging behind (Hermione had mockingly suggested that Quirrell's turban had sneaked the troll in on purpose and Harry was arguing that it was probably Professor Snape instead) when a massive humanoid in a pink tutu was ejected from the stairway to the dungeons in a cacophony of fireworks, soon followed by a diminutive ghost in a jester's outfit who was giggling madly.

"Ooh, such fun!" the spook was giggling. "Tommy always gives Peeves such nice toys to play with! Heeheehee!'"

Peeves was kicking the troll about, dumping buckets on its dumb little head, making flowers grow on its club, and a thousand other vexations. Once the initial surprise had worn out, Dumbledore cast a strong stunning spell at the grunting beast, backed up by Snape. Once the troll was down, Dumbledore extended a hand for Peeves to shake and told him:

"Peeves the Poltergeist," he said dramatically, "you have proven your usefulness to the School once and for all and demonstrated that keeping a sense of humor in grave circumstances can be vital. For this, on behalf of Hogwarts, I thank you."

Rather than shake the offered hand, Peeves tugged on Dumbledore's beard as if ringing a doorbell before flying away with a crazy cackle.

Hermione looked at Ron and Harry.

"Okay, can I ask a question this time?"

* * *

Soon, the students were called back to the Hall. Dumbledore informed them that the Troll (whose limp body had been dragged into the Forbidden Forest by Hagrid) had been 'dealt with', which the trio of Gryffindors, Snape and the Slytherins all agreed to snicker at as the understatement of the century.

Quirrell looked a bit disappointed with himself when he came to and realized everybody was back in the Hall eating merrily. Hermione suggested it as evidence that the Turban was behind it all, though they later rationalized that Quirrell was probably ashamed of having fainted and thus played no role in defeating the Troll, which would arguably have been his duty as the Defence Professor.

Harry had ended up the Seeker of the Gryffindor team for disobeying a teacher. Hermione thought that was a very fitting punishment, but Harry didn't seem to mind at all, and Ron and the Twins all agreed that it was 'bloody brilliant'. What was so brilliant about precariously hanging onto a floating stick of wood high in the air, while being constantly forced to reach out to catch a fluttering bird-thing _and_ under attack by semi-sentient balls intent on bludgeoning him, was beyond her (though the 'bloody' part she could certainly agree on). Thanks to Harry's quick instincts and (to be honest) incredible luck, the first Quidditch Match had been a triumph for Gryffindor House (if you cared for that sort of thing; Hermione agreed with snakes on the facts that you were better firmly rooted on the hard ground, and that there was little sense in trying to catch things that were inedible).

This winning streak had gone on until November, when Harry's broom went mad halfway through the match. Professor Snape and Professor Quirrell were both staring intently in his direction, which could have indicated either of them was casting a spell, but at the same time who _wouldn't_ stare at one of their students in mortal peril twenty feet in the air?

While Ron and Hermione were paralyzed by fear and indecision, Dumbledore leaped off his seat and conjured a large mattress for Harry to land on when he finally lost his grip. Hermione thought she heard bark a very rude curse (of the muggle variety, that is), but then she saw the stuttering buffoon had simply fallen backwards off his chair.

Harry was alright (though his broom escaped through the air, never to be seen again) and the match stopped there, to the Slytherin crowd's cheering (as this was the closest they'd ever come to winning that year).

* * *

After some inner debate, Hermione decided to spend her Christmas holidays at Hogwarts. The snake-like part of her did not want to leave such a comfy nest, and the more reasonable side of the argument was that there was much to explore in the Castle, and that she'd feel bad for leaving Harry alone. (Ron had initially offered to stay with him, but eventually opted to follow the Twins back to their home to continue the prank war there. Harry couldn't argue, especially after Fred and George made his morning pumpkin juice sprout eyeballs and a mouth, for his connection to Ron.)

On Christmas Day, her parents sent her some presents in a muggle package along with a long letter (half of which was straightforward, clinical and typewritten, the work of Daniel, and the other slightly looser, more emotional, and handwritten — the writing of Sally). The package had come delivered by a bulky snowy owl (twice bigger than Harry's pet Hedwig) whose snow-covered feathers were so thick and fluffy it was hard to recognize him as an owl in the first place, from a certain distance. The owl proudly wore a tin 'Muggle Relations Office' badge on its collar, and Hermione guessed that Office was in charge of forwarding muggle mail to Hogwarts. She'd have to tell her parents to pick a sturdier package next time, however — cardboard wasn't made to be carried through hail and snow, and the presents inside (books, naturally, plus a rather nice skirt and a packet of sugar-free snacks) were quite damp, though spells could take care of it.

Harry's presents were definitely more interesting than hers. One was a magically-knit sweater sent by the Weasley family (Ron was obviously very thoughtful), and the other, perhaps odder still, was an invisibility cloak with only a cryptic note attached to it.

"Huh. Weird. Any idea who this might be from?"

"Well", Harry answered, "at first I thought it was Ron again — a cloak like that _would_ explain some of his pranks, wouldn't it?"

"You're quite right!" Hermione said.

"Yes, but it's not like him to be so… _mysterious_ about it. Friends don't have to keep that kind of secret from each other…"

Hermione looked away at that, though the next part made her feel better:

"…especially when he'd be all but admitting it by sending the cloak in the first place. Besides, the note says it used to belong to my father. If Ron had access to my father's things, I think he would have _said_ something by now, right? Also, the handwriting's all wrong… though I suppose he could have gotten Percy to write it for him — but no, that makes no sense, he'd want it to be a secret…"

"What if it's Professor Snape?" she volunteered.

Harry stared blankly.

"Think about it. He always calls you _Potter_ , doesn't he? The way he first looked at you — you'd swear he knew your mother or father when they were young. I think he picks on you so much because he's always annoyed you're not living up to how good he remembers your father was. It'd make so much sense!"

Harry kept staring for a second more and then draped the Cloak over himself before Hermione could go on about how this was obviously an erroneous reasoning on Snape's part because his memory'd be focused on _later_ years, and you couldn't compare a first-year to a seventh-year, no matter how good.

"Look, Hermione, I'm going out to explore a bit, alright? I think I need some time alone."

She'd have said something about it being against the rules, but she planned to do the very same thing (minus the Cloak) later today, so she stayed silent. What kind of stupid rule was 'Don't go exploring the magical castle full of wonders and secrets', anyway?

Harry was soon back to drag her in front of a strange mirror placed in an unused classroom. Harry's description of it (his parents were there! right there! it had to show the Afterlife, or… something!) did not match up to what she saw in it at all, and after a bit of thinking she realized the Mirror projected a picture of your deepest desire at the time of viewing. There was a twinge of guilt in her own heart when she realized Harry must have yearned for his parents' approving presence more than ever after her insensitive comment.

* * *

After comforting Harry about the Mirror not truly being a contact to his lost parents (though in the back of her mind was the notion that magical ways to talk to dead people might be something to look into), Hermione went off exploring on her own. She didn't really know where she wanted to go, but she knew one thing.

 _God_ she missed snakes.

That's what she'd seen in the Mirror. She was beaming, surrounded by her parents, Ron, Harry, and a collection of friendly snakes; and all three of them were chatting away and finding out all there was to know from a nearby library. She thought she was sitting strangely close to Ron in the image, but what she focused on was the _snakes._

She'd suddenly realized she hadn't had an occasion to speak a word of Parseltongue since the Sorting. For a while at first she'd tried to locate the Sorting Hat, but Fred and George had eventually informed her it was stored in the Headmaster's Office (right before the candy they were eating had turned into fully-grown salamanders that leaped out of their mouths, sending a round of applause in the Gryffindor Common Room in Ron's direction). After that, between the lessons, the Weasley Prank War and incidents like the Troll, it had slipped her mind, an unconscious emptiness in the back of her mind that she hadn't thought of until now.

In the end, after failing to find any Parselmouth portrait or ghost, she resorted to talking to herself in a mirror (specifically, that of the second floor girls' bathrooms; Moaning Myrtle, the local ghost, had been called away to some sort of 'young' ghosts meeting over the holidays, so they were, for once, available and wailing-free). Staring at her reflection, she began hiss-babbling:

{ _Oh Scales I missed this. English is nice of course, I wouldn't want to speak Parseltongue all the time, but it gets so tiring when you always have to open your mouth wide to speak…}_

Towards the end of that sentence, the sink in front of her sank into the ground to reveal a dark opening. There was some sort of slide running down into the darkness below. Part of Hermione considered she should repay Harry his favor and show him her finding, but she remembered she still hadn't told her friends about her _ability_. She had just kept putting off because the more time had passed, the harder she had feared it would be to reveal it. At any rate, not being a Gryffindor for nothing, she plunged into the unknown. (It wasn't _technically_ against the rules, since as far as she knew that particular tunnel wasn't on Mr Filch's list of out-of-bounds locations.)

She encountered another door down below and asked it to { _open_ } in Parseltongue again, guessing that had been what triggered the first passageway. Her intuition was right and she nervously stepped through the opening. In the large cathedral-like cave on the other side, she saw the breathing form of an enormous serpent. Its eyes were closed, but it was clearly quite awake. It hissed:

{ _Who disturbs my slumber?_ }

Hermione had heard less clichéd monster greetings, but she had other things to ask about than the snake's choice of words. Rather a lot other things.

{ _Greetings, Big Serpent. I am a human Speaker, my name is Hermione Granger._ }


	3. The Snake in the Walls

**AUTHOR'S NOTE —** _You get an early update! Sort of! So as you may have seen, this plot is moving along pretty quickly. Hope that doesn't bother anybody. Also, one reviewer complained about me making Ron too good at magic. I already answered them privately, but to anyone else who may share this sentiment — I know what I'm doing. This is not at all a random decision and there's a very good in-reason story for how he is able to keep up with Fred and George's pranking spree. Just bear with me for a while longer!_

 **Chapter III - The Snake in the Walls**

Not wanting Ron to be left behind, she waited the two days before school started again. On that evening, she found her two friends playing chess together in the Common Room.

"Harry! Ron!" she called. "Oh, you simply won't believe who I met the other day!"

"Someone who talks more than you do?" Ron suggested with a grin.

Ignoring the tease, she continued:

"No, Ronald, don't be silly. I found a secret passageway!"

"Anything to do with the Third Floor Corridor?" suggested Harry. "If you're talking about the three-headed dog, yes, we know. Me and Ron accidentally…"

"Three-headed…?" repeated Hermione. "Oh, you mean a Cerberus — wait — _that_ 's what Professor Dumbledore is hiding there? Well, his choice of pets isn't really our concern, I guess… though I do wonder how one would even go about buying a Cerberus in the first place."

"Hermione," Harry helpfully said to put her back on track, "you were going to tell us something…?"

"Oh! Yes, yes. It's a passageway that starts in the second floor girls' bathrooms…"

"Why would you go there?" blurted Ron. "If s… some people I know are right, that place is bloody haunted!"

"Well, I didn't see the ghost, but honestly, how many times will I have to tell you the ghosts of Hogwarts are extremely harmless? The point is, that the corridor leads to some sort of underground dungeon…"

"Yeah, because there are sooo many _above-_ ground dungeons!" quipped Harry.

"…where I met this very large snake. It was very polite, and it's so old — well, I say it, but it's really female…"

"Wait. It was a _talking_ snake?" Ron interrupted her.

"Well, it doesn't speak _English_ , if that's what you mean, but I'm a Parselmouth you know" said the girl matter-of-factly.

Ron stood up and took a step backwards, the color draining from his face.

"A Parselmouth?!" said the boy. "I thought you were my friend! You-you lying, secretive, Slytherin - LIAR!"

He tried to pull Harry away with him.

"Come on, Harry! She's not safe to be around!" he told his friend.

"Ron, it's okay, really" Harry argued. "I can speak to snakes too, y'know."

With a loud crunch, the red-head slumped back on his chair, utterly defeated.

"Oh, bloody hell…"

While leaving their friend to work out his prejudice in peace, the two Parselmouths began to chat:

"God!" Harry began. "I had no idea other people could speak to snakes… let alone you!… So it's called, what, Parselmouth…ness?"

"Parsel _tongue_ , Harry. Didn't you research it?"

"Umm, no. Researching stuff is more of _your_ thing, isn't it?" Harry answered naively.

After briefly rolling her eyes, Hermione changed the subject:

"Here, let's see how you do. { _Hello Harry!_ }"

"{ _What?_ }" said Harry in confusion. "We've been talking for a while, why do you say hello _now_?"

"Harry, I just spoke to you in Parseltongue. Don't you realize? Here, try to tell the difference. This is English; { _this is Snake-Speak._ }"

"Oh,… uh… yeah, I think I got it. Try again!"

"Banana." Hermione enunciated. "Did I just speak English or Parseltongue?"

"English?" Harry said tentatively.

"Good! { _Pencil._ }"

" _{Snake-Speak?…_ }"

"Rubber."

"English!"

"Well done!" she congratulated him before going back to Parseltongue. { _I had a bit of trouble telling English and Snake-Speak apart at first too — I think there's some sort of Confundus Charm that comes with the Gift, so you can't notice you've switched unless you really pay attention.}_

"OH, BLOODY HELL, STOP HISSING AT EACH OTHER!" screamed a desperate Ron. "It's bloody scary, mates!"

Sharing a giggle, Harry and Hermione chorused:

"Oops — sorry!"

"If you want, we could teach you some Parseltongue later", Hermione then suggested. "It's not nearly as scary when _you_ 're the one speaking it."

"Well, uh…" hesitated the red-head.

Hermione guessed he was torn between his desire not to be left behind by his two best friends ( _and_ the allure of finally learning something _special_ to make his mother proud), and his instinctive belief that Parseltongue was a dark, slimy Slytherin thing. Finally he spoke:

"Oh, what have I got to lose. Deal me in."

* * *

"Say, Ron, I visited the big snake today. She told me she's a { _Basilisk_ }. That's… I think it means a 'basilisk'?"

"A _basilisk_!?" said Ron. "Merlin's hat, we've gotta report that, Hermione! Basilisks are illegal!"

"If you say so," said Hermione after a moment of silence.

She strode towards Prefect Percy Weasley.

"Oh, Percy? Just wanted you to know there's a basilisk lady under the school and I'm good friends with her."

Hermione then turned her heels on the flabbergasted prefect. When she was halfway back to the chess table, she heard the older boy screaming:

"RON, IF YOU PUT HER UP TO THIS, IT ISN'T EVEN _FUNNY_!"

She whispered to her two friends:

"There. I did my duty. Now stop being such prats and let me see your Charms homework. I'm sure there's something I can help you with."

—|—|—

"GEORGE! WHAT HAPPENED‽"

"It appears, brother mine, that somebody transfigured our beds into yoghurt overnight."

* * *

"Hermione, you keep telling us about that chamber snake. Do you think we could actually meet it? Her?"

"Uhm… It would be suspicious for two boys to be seen entering the girls' bathroom, wouldn't it?"

Ron and Harry blushed and nodded meekly. But then Harry had an illumination:

"Wait. I _do_ have an Invisibility Cloak, don't I?"

"Oh. Right. Although… maybe we won't need it! I have an idea, I just… Oh, I'll see what I can do by next week, and if not we'll go with the Cloak."

* * *

"Harry, Ron, I present you… the Basilisk of Hogwarts!i" Hermione said proudly.

"Uh, Hermione, there's no snake he-"

{ _Greetings, young wizards._ }

The stunned silence that followed was broken by a triumphant Hermione, who was eager to explain all about this new miracle:

"It was her idea, you know — she can move through the plumbing. She's right underneath us right now, if the map of the plumbing in _Hogwarts: A History_ is up-to-date."

More silence.

"Well, _say_ something!" prompted Hermione. { _Harry, you go first._ }

{ _Umm, Hello, I'm Harry Potter… How do you do?_ }

{ _The name of Potter is not unknown to me… I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Harry Potter._ }

"Uh… { _I exist! Happy, the you, see look! New!_ } hissed an uncertain Ron in broken Parseltongue.

{ _Excuse him, great Basilisk_ }, said Hermione apologetically, still staring down at the floor. { _He's not a natural Speaker like Harry and I, I've been teaching him._ }

{ _Teaching him?_ } said the Basilisk. { _A wonder I would not have thought possible, Hermione Granger. Indeed, it seems there is much my old Masters did not tell me… a muggleborn Speaker, and of great wit too — a boy wizard who was taught to Speak — no, the great Slytherin did not foresee such things._ }

{ _Wait, Slytherin?_ } asked Harry. { _As in,_ _the_ _Slytherin? Salazar? The Founder?_ }

{ _Why yes, Harry Potter_ }, hissed the Basilisk. { _Master Slytherin the Warlock was the one who hatched me and built this Chamber where I reside, almost a thousand years ago._ }

{ _Wow! You is the old! Really!_ }

A flickering whisper — a snake's way of chuckling — met Ron's remark.

* * *

In the days that followed, the Basilisk took to invisibly following the three pupils around. The gift of being a Parselmouth extended further than the innate knowledge of the tongue and the Confundus Charm Hermione had discovered — it made the hissing clearer and louder to you than it would seem to the non-Speaker. It only made sense, of course, that the creators of the spell would have included such a thing; Hermione guessed it was to facilitate talking to the smaller, tiny-lunged sorts of adder without having to crouch down right next to them. However, she used it in a completely different way. It allowed her to talk to her new friend right through the wall even if both of them were only hiss-whispering.

Thus, that week, chatting with the Basilisk became a habit of hers whenever she had finished a practical exercise, sometimes joined by Harry and even Ron, who was picking up the language pretty quickly. One by one, she introduced her teachers to the great serpent. As it turned out, the Basilisk had last roamed the pipes fifty years earlier, and there were already some teachers then who still held their posts in 1991 — starting with ghostly Professor Cuthbert Binns, the insufferably soporific History teacher.

Professor Snape came close to catching her in the act (she supposed that, as the Head of Slytherin, it only made sense he'd know what Parseltongue sounded like) but she had silenced herself as soon as she'd noticed him walking towards her. He was obviously all ready for an icy, snarky remark about hissing instead of brewing, but his sneer hard turned to a scowl when Hermione's potions had turned out to be absolutely perfect.

She had more trouble on Friday of that week, when she tried to chat with the Basilisk in Defence Class. Harry wasn't taking part in that conversation, too busy clutching his forehead whenever Quirrell's turban got near him. (Hermione thought the gag was getting old, but then anyone had their quirks.) As she began to speak with the Basilisk, she was suddenly interrupted by a voice coming from the front of the classroom:

{ _Basilisk! Is that you?_ }

She heard the Basilisk gasp and immediately reply:

{ _Yes, Master._ }

{ _What are you doing out of the Chamber!?_ }

{ _I was… merely giving myself some exercise, roaming the pipelines, Master._ }

{ _Well, you would do better to stay in the Chamber unless call for you. It would not do for the old fool to be alerted to my presence before I secure what I seek in the Third Floor Corridor._ }

{ _Do you refer to the large dog with the three heads, Master?_ }

Hermione winced. She had been the one to tell the Basilisk about Professor Dumbledore's Cerberus. The snake had made a blunder by mentioning it. The mysterious voice's reply was quick:

{ _And how would you know this if you stayed in the pipes? Fool! I forbid you to take any such initiatives in the future, imbecile. For your information, the Cerberus is of no interest to me. What I want is what it is guarding. Now go!_ }

{ _I apologize, Master._ } hissed the Basilisk, and Hermione understood that it was meant for her as much as for the Master.

…Whoever he was. The voice wasn't that of a student — even in hissing you could tell it was too raspy for that. Nor was it Quirrell himself: even as the Parseltongue voice berated the poor Basilisk, the stuttering moron had been stammering his way through a lesson on defending oneself from a Fearsome Rabbit (which Hermione was pretty sure wasn't even a thing, for that matter).

This only left one suspect.

"Oh God." she mouthed, gesturing to Harry. "You weren't joking, about the turban…?"

Harry had heard her and he shook his head energetically.

* * *

They knew the Basilisk couldn't visit them anymore, and so first thing in the morning on Saturday the trio of friends headed down into the Chamber to meet her, under the cover of Harry's Invisibility Cloak. They passed the wailing ghost-girl Moaning Myrtle, who (in a testament to the reliability of Harry's cloak) did not notice a thing.

{ _Basilisk? Basilisk?_ } Harry called. Hermione had impressed it upon him that one had to warn the Basilisk of one's presence before entering the inner sanctum, so that she may closer he eyes and not kill them or petrify them. The boys had thrown a fit upon learning Basilisks had such powers ( _Really_ , hadn't they read _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_? Typical), but they had to follow her along anyway.

{ _I am here, young wizards and witch. You may come in, I have made myself harmless._ }

Hermione hissed at the second door to { _open_ } and they entered the monster's inner lair.

{ _Great Basilisk_ }, Hermione began. { _I think of you as a friend, as shortly as we've known each other; the way that person in the Defence Class Room treated you yesterday saddens us. I'm sure the same is true of my friends, too._ }

{ _Yes, true!_ } acquiesced Ron while Harry nodded.

{ _Look, who was that voice?_ } Harry blurted out. { _Is he really your Master? What's he trying to steal?_ }

{ _Harry_ } chastised Hermione. { _Who's asking too many questions now?_ }

{ _No, no, Harry Potter is right. We must act swiftly._ } said the Basilisk. { _Those questions are urgent, more so than your protests of affection to me. Although those are not unappreciated. This voice was indeed my Master — my latest Master — the Heir of Slytherin who opened my Chamber fifty years ago. His name was Tom Riddle. I do not know how he came to possess your young professor, nor what he seeks that the Headmaster holds behind the great dog. But I'm certain he is truly Tom Riddle, for when he ordered me, I felt the cursed bond placed on me by Master Slytherin, forcing me to obey his orders once again._ }

{ _A bond? 'Forcing' you? You can't disobey him then, even in secret?_ } Harry asked sympathetically, thanking God the Dursleys didn't have access to any magic like this one.

"So if I'm following this right…" said Ron in English, "if this master of hers tells her to eat us… bloody hell!"

{ _You really cannot disobey?_ } asked Hermione.

{ _Alas, no, young witch._ } said the Basilisk, bowing her head down. { _Orders are orders, so willed it my first Master… Perhaps he did not trust me enough, or perhaps he thought of me as just an animal to tame. But I truly cannot._ }

{ _But how do you know whose orders to obey? Wouldn't any Parselmouth's do?_ } argued Hermione, desperate.

{ _No, Hermione Granger. The bond is separate from the Gift, and passed down Salazar's line and his alone._ }

{ _But… isn't there a chance me or Hermione is a descendant of Slytherin, too? We could have gotten the Gift from him in the first place!_ } Harry suggested, full of hope.

{ _I… do not know_ }, said the Basilisk. { _Perhaps we may test it. Yes. Young wizard and witch, I want each of you to give me an order; I will attempt to ignore it._ }

{ _Okay_ }, said Harry. { _Turn your head to the right!_ }

The Basilisk stood still.

{ _No, you have no power over me, young Potter_ }, ruled the snake.

{ _And me?_ } tried Hermione. { _Say 'Fearsome Rabbit'!_ }

Again the Basilisk remained silent.

{ _Oh, well. It was worth a try. So I'm not descended from Slytherin, huh?_ } asked Harry.

{ _I don't know…_ } said Hermione. { _It's possible, of course, but maybe the Master just cast a spell that limits the bond to him and him alone._ }

{ _I recall no such thing, Hermione Granger; but it is possible_ }, opined the Basilisk. { _Well then, it seems it is the end of the friendship we had begun, young wizards and witch…_ }

{ _Aha!_ } said Hermione, an idea having struck her. { _Perhaps not. Basilisk, I order you to come visit us through the pipes like you have done so far._ }

{ _You are out of your mind, child!_ } said the Basilisk. { _We have seen that you do not hold me in your power, unfortunately. You cannot counteract the Master's orders._ }

{ _But I can work around them_ }, said Hermione with a sly grin. { _His order was worded: 'I forbid you to take any such initiatives'. If I'm the one telling you to visit us, you're not taking any initiatives, are you?_ }

{ _Oh, surely he cannot be tricked so easily… But… Wait! In Slytherin's name, you are right, Hermione Granger! I thank you ever so much! I will see you in the next week; but now I must rest, if you pleased._ }

{ _Of course, great Basilisk. Good bye!_ } said Hermione, tip-toeing out of the room, followed by Harry and Ron who also waved goodbye to their giant, scaly friend.

* * *

"Alright," said Hermione in the quiet of the Gryffindor dorm. "What could Professor Dumbledore be hiding that this Tom Riddle would want to steal?"

"Well, there _is_ something," Harry suggested. "When I went to Gringotts—"

"Oh, you went to Gringotts too?" gushed Hermione. "Were you polite to the Goblins?"

"Uhhh… not particularly?"

"Oh dear, you'll never get ahead in business that way." said Hermione with obvious concern. "I'm sure the Goblins would remember _me_ for being polite to them."

"I'm not _trying_ to get ahead in — oh, never mind. The point is that there was this little object Hagrid had to take from a vault on Dumbledore's behalf, and, I read it the newspaper, you know, the… Daily Comet… The day after that, that very vault was broken into. They never caught the thief! I bet it was Tom Riddle and Quirrell, and Dumbledore decided to move his treasure closer to him."

"Oh, Harry, _you_ 're a treasure. That must be right!" smiled Hermione. "But what's the treasure then?"

"I don't know… something magical, I guess. Maybe something to turn a turban back into a human."

"Probably."

"Think we should try to take the turban off of Quirrell and bring it to Professor Dumbledore, then?"

"I like how you think."

* * *

Thus normalcy (insofar as talking to an immortal giant snake through the walls of a magical castle can be called normalcy) resumed in the next week and onwards. The Basilisk was learning as much as the children by attending their classes, Hermione and Harry taking turns translating the lectures for her. Salazar Slytherin may have been her creator, but it became clearer and clearer to Hermione that the man had been a rubbish father. All he had taught her was that her purpose was to kill mud-bloods on his Heir's orders, and when to safely do so; anything else she knew, she'd picked up from his rambling (as Slytherin had been prone to coming down to the Chamber and monologuing about what he thought was wrong with the world).

As a matter of fact, come march, the History curriculum required they study the Founders, and this was the perfect opportunity for Hermione to ask more about Slytherin. It took three loud calls for Binns to notice her, but it was worth it.

"Ah, yes, very good question, Miss Duncan," said Binns with uncharacteristic interest. "Salazar Slytherin was born in Ireland of unknown, albeit pureblood parents. He is known as a Parselmouth, a talented Legilimens and a champion of pureblood ideology, as well, of course, as for having co-founded Hogwarts with Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff."

Making a note to research what a Legilimens was later, Hermione insisted:

"Yes… I wondered, if Slytherin hated muggle-borns so, why did he allow them to study at Hogwarts?"

"Ah, yes, yes…" answered Binns, "that _is_ the question. Well… of course, this is only myth and rumor, but legend has it… no, I really couldn't, I'm a teacher of _facts…_ Oh well, if you insist… It is said that the reason Slytherin left the school at the young age of seventy-six was his growing dissent with the other Founders over, precisely, the matter of the Muggle-born… and that he left a terrible weapon behind, so that his Heir, whoever he may be… funny, that, the Slytherin line was lost towards the end of the 19th century, I do not believe he has any descendants alive today… so that is Heir, as I said, yes, ah yes, his Heir… may use it to purge the school of those deemed… unworthy… in Slytherin's view. Now this weapon, whatever it is, and most think it is a monster… this weapon would be hidden in a secret room of this very castle… known, if you'll forgive the dramatics… the Chamber of Secrets."

"Oh," said Hermione over the gasps of those of her classmates who weren't asleep. "Yes, I'd been wondering."

While Binns returned to his previous droning lecture, forgetting all about 'Miss Duncan', Hermione hissed into the wall right next to her, where she knew the Basilisk was:

{ _I've just talked to Teacher Binns about you and the first Master. He does not know much, but it would appear the existence of some weapon against those of 'impure' blood (that would be you) hidden in a Chamber of Secrets (your chamber, I think) is known. As a legend. The sort of legend that scares everyone at night._ }

{ _Except Malfoy_ }, Harry added mischievously. { _I'm sure it's a bedtime story for him._ }

Ah, Malfoy… The blonde-haired nuisance whom Snape favored to ludicrous extents had became the subject of many jokes between the three friends, to his unending annoyance. Hermione had told a bit about him to the Basilisk, who had suggested eating him before Hermione scolded her for slipping back into Slytherin's teachings (centuries-old brainwashing _was_ hard to outgrow). Earlier in the year he'd tried to goad Harry into a midnight duel after a ridiculous stunt in flying class, but Hermione had dispelled these silly notions on the sound snakelike logic that they had other things to do at night, namely _sleep_. Thinking about it later that day, Hermione had realized Draco had probably had some sort of trick in mind (it wasn't like him to play fair) and congratulated herself all over again for preventing it.

* * *

And every evening, Harry, Ron and Hermione discussed their battle-plan for turban-napping. They hoped they'd have it ready by the end of May. Riddle would get what he deserved from trying to rob Professor Dumbledore, hurting Harry, ordering the Basilisk around… and turning their Defence Professor into a complete doofus. Honestly, how were they supposed to get a well-rounded education?


	4. First Year Finale

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Well… I did it! I covered the entire school year! Next is a small interlude, and then we shall move on to Year Two… which shall, as you can guess, move even farther from the canon plotline than this one did._

 **CHAPTER IV: First Year Finale**

Quietly, ever so quietly, an invisible duo was making its way to the Headmaster of Hogwarts's Office, under the cover of an Invisibility Cloak. The first was Hermione Granger, twelve-year-old, Gryffindor, Parselmouth, and hatcher of the plan. The second was Harry Potter, eleven-year-old, Gryffindor, Boy Who Lived, and owner of the Cloak, who had insisted that the Cloak was _his_ and so he _deserved_ to go along if Hermione was going to use it. One might be surprised to see that their friend Ron hadn't joined them on this 'late-evening stroll', but they'd left him looking rather distressed that his pet rat Scabbers had run off god knew where.

It didn't take long before the two children found the distinctive Griffin Stairway that they'd been told led to the Headmaster's Office. That stairway always appeared to manifest wherever it was convenient for those looking for it, and in this particular case they found it in an unassuming corridor on the Second Floor. Hermione whispered at the golden griffin:

"Um, could you let us in, please?"

The statue didn't budge.

"Mr Griffin!" she insisted, slightly louder this time, still under the cover of the Invisibility Cloak. "I know I don't have a password, but I really need to speak to the Sorting Hat!"

Harry elbowed her.

"… _We_ really need to speak to the Sorting Hat!" she corrected.

Still the bizarre gargoyle stood still.

After a cautious glance to make sure the grumpy caretaker Filch and his attack dog of a cat weren't anywhere in sight, Harry took the initiative to pull the enchanted cloaked off of them. Hermione thought she saw the Gargoyle twitch upon seeing the two of them appear, but it still didn't say anything.

Hermione and Harry gestured at it and did the best they could to silently communicate a sense of great urgency to it.

"It has to do with the Third Floor Corridor, alright? And a teacher!" mouthed Harry. "It's important!"

The Griffin stubbornly refused to move.

Hermione poked it with her wand.

" _Ack!_ " yelped the golden, misshapen creature in a tinny, reverberating voice.

"Okay, you're definitely awake. Stop ignoring us." whispered Hermione, doing her best to sound outraged. She had dealt with this sort of situation many times before with snakes.

" _Go away._ " muttered the Griffin, doing its best not to move its beak more than absolutely necessary, maintaining the illusion of a normal statue.

"Look," argued Hermione, "we just want to speak to the Sorting Hat for a while. We know Professor Dumbledore is away, on business in London I think?… so we won't bother anyone at all — it's the Hat, you see, that we need to talk to."

" _It's forbidden._ "

Hermione poked him again, straight between the eyes.

" _Ack! Ack!_ " yowled the metal creature, trying to shake off the stinging, ruffling its scale-like gold feathers in the process.

"She's going to keep poking you until you let us in, you know." said Harry, extremely amused by the whole situation.

" _Now listen here, you brats! (Ack!) I was enchanted by Godric Gryffindor himself, you (ack!) you know! I have guarded this (Ack! Ack!) this Office, as is my (Ack!) solemn duty, for a thousand years without (ack!) failing! I will not (ack!) be bested by (ack!) a couple of (ack) arrogant (ack) - WILL YOU STOP THAT?_ "

"You know, you could just… dodge. Step aside. It's not like I'm going at you particularly fast." said Hermione with a malicious grin.

" _But — ack! — I cant! I'm supposed to stand still!_ " pleaded the Griffin in distress. " _I shouldn't even be talking to you in the first place!_ "

*Poke*

" _Ack!_ "

*Poke*

" _Ack!_ "

*Poke*

" _Ack!_ "

"Couldn't you just ask the Sorting Hat if it's okay for us to visit?" Hermione asked the shaking gargoyle. "Tell him it's Hermione Granger who wants to have a nice little chat with him."

*Poke*

" _…_ _Fine!_ " barked the creature, defeated.

Slowly, with the distinct noise of metal creaking, the Golden Griffin rose from its seating position and let the moving stairs behind him carry him into the room. A few moments later, he came back down, head bowed in shame, and told them they could come in.

Brimming with contained excitement (both at their situation and at their recent victory against the obstructive gargoyle), the two children entered the Headmaster's Office.

It was a large and beautiful circular room, full of funny little noises, emitted by a number of curious silver instruments sitting on spindle-legged tables, whirring and emitting little puffs of smoke. The walls were covered with the sleeping portraits of old wizards and witches (whom Hermione knew, thanks to _Hogwarts: A History_ , to be the likenesses of former Headmasters and Headmistresses). There was also an enormous, claw-footed desk, and, sitting on a shelf behind it, a shabby, tainted wizard's hat — the Sorting Hat. Its eye-like folds were wide with surprise and its ragged tear of a mouth was outstretched in a genial smile.

"Well! Well! Well!" commented the Hat warmly. "I didn't expect there to be much excitement around here, what with Albus away on 'business'… and now would you look at that! A visitor! And what a visitor… oh, better, two, I see!"

Hermione walked confidently towards the Hat, and Harry, a little more shyly, followed her, before waving hello at the old hat.

"I hope our old friend Goldie didn't give you too much trouble!" commented the Hat in good humor.

"He did, actually, but I poked him." said Hermione as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

The Sorting Hat stared in incomprehension.

"Over and over. Until he no longer could bear to sit still, you see."

The tear-mouth began quivering.

"It's very effective on snakes."

The tear split open as the Hat broke out into a hearty laugh, the likes of which he hadn't had the pleasure to experience in centuries.

"BWA-HA! HAH-HAAH! HAHAHAHA HAH! HA! HAAAH!"

The booming laughter woke up most of the snoozing portrait-people, who scuttled closer to the canvas to see what was happening down there.

"Haaah… Hah…" died the Hat's laugh, and even though he had no hands certainly couldn't cry, one could almost picture him wiping a tear of mirth off his beady old eyes. "Oh, Miss Granger, you are still a beacon of mirth in a world of bores."

Murmurs were heard from the walls as the various portrait-people took rightful offense to the Hat's word.

"So," it continued, "I suppose teasing Goldie wasn't your only reason for visiting me?"

"Well, no, Mr Hat." Harry explained. "We wanted to know how you were made, you see, and if you have any weaknesses."

"Egads!" said the Hat in mock-surprise. "You do realize that sounds rather like a threat?"

"Uh? Oh, no, no!" protested Harry. "It's not about you at all, I promise, sir! Only, we came across someone else like you…"

"Like me?" boasted the Hat. "Young friends, I rather doubt that. I am a unique combo of Pensieve magics, Legilimency and an ordinary but fashionable cloth hat. I was made whole-cloth… heheh, that wasn't even on purpose, that's a rather good one… I was made by the Founders, as you would know if you'd paid attention to my song at the Feast. As for weaknesses, I'm as weak to a Killing Curse as anybody else, but I like to think my four parents did a rather good job of warding me against most possible ways a wizard could devise to destroy a sapient piece of headwear."

"Ah… so you were never a person, were you?" said Hermione, a bit disappointed.

"As an entity with a mind and feelings of its own," retorted the Hat, "I believe I fit most common definitions of a 'person'. That being said, I see what you mean, Miss Granger, and no, while I was gifted copies of the Founders' memories, I never inhabited a body of flesh and blood."

"Oh… And you wouldn't know of any means by which a wizard could turn themselves into someone like you, then?"

"Well, I suppose… a true genius _might_ be able to replicate my own enchantments, but pour all of his memories into the receptacle rather than bits and pieces of four separate people's… although the question of whether the resulting being would truly be the same as the wizard, or merely a copy, is a well-known ethical dilemma. …Well, there would be a way to split one's… but no, that would be insane… …fine, forget that last part. Why do you ask?"

"Well," Harry answered, "we're pretty sure Professor Quirrell's turban is secretly controlling him and trying to steal something from Professor Dumbledore."

"Quirrell, you say?" repeated the Hat. "Quirinius Quirrell? Oh, come now, that is preposterous. Ravenclaw, was he?… No. And Albus made him the Defence Professor, I think… Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous."

"Look, the thing is, the turban is apparently called Tom Riddle, and…"

" _Tom Riddle_?" blurted the Hat. "Him!? Oh yes, he might have… He might well have done… a turban, though? And why Quirrell?…"

"I'm sorry," said a voice from above, "but were you discussing Tom Riddle?"

The voice, as it happened, was that of one of the Portraits — a balding old wizard with a long beard and a rather stupid look in his beady eyes.

"Yes, Professor…"

"Dippet, Armando Dippet," the Portrait introduced himself. "It so happens that the Riddle boy studied at Hogwarts whilst I served as Headmaster; whatever became of him, then? I haven't seen him since he applied for the Defence Professorship years ago… I was already a Portrait then, of course. He looked rather sickly at the time, too. I hope he got better."

"Well, he's apparently up and turned himself into a turban," explained the Sorting Hat.

"… A turban." repeated Dippet.

The two children nodded energetically.

"…The unpainted world is definitely not for me." muttered Dippet as he turned away from the outside world and retreated deeper into his canvas. "I'll leave that to my true self for now. He's still alive, you know!"

"Yes", Harry heard another nearby portrait snark, "so you have bragged about a hundred times since you were hung here."

Ignoring the Headmasters' bickering, Harry and Hermione prodded the Hat further:

"So you really have no idea how we might be able to take him off poor Professor Quirrell?"

"Alas, no, my young friends…" lamented the Hat. "Whether or not the basic enchantments that created the Riddling Turban are the same ones the Founders used on me, I haven't a clue how he may have protected himself. Knowing that Riddle boy, I expect some pretty dark magic, however. I urge you to be cautious!"

"What about the Third Floor Corridor, then?" asked Harry.

"Yes? What about it?" asked the Sorting Hat, not seeing the point of the question.

"Well," Hermione clarified, "it's apparently where what Riddle wants is hidden."

"Oh! Yes! Yes! I see…" the Hat nodded. "I'm sorry, I had forgotten… you mean the Philosopher's Stone, then."

"So that's what it was!" exclaimed Hermione, beaming.

Harry stared in confusion.

"The Philosopher's Stone, Harry!" Hermione insisted. "Even muggles know about it, haven't you heard? It's an alchemical construct, also known as the _Grand-Œuvre_ , that allows for the transmutation of any metal into pure gold, and is the basis for the Elixir of Life — some sort of potion that can heal any injury or disease, including old age!"

"Oh; sure. Why didn't I guess that?" said Harry, sarcastically reacting to Hermione's textbook-like impromptu lecture.

"Muggles know about it, you say, Miss Granger? How interesting. Every decade something new!" said the Hat. "However, yes, your information is mostly accurate. The Stone currently in the Third-Floor Corridor is not, properly, the possession of Albus Dumbledore; it is the Stone of Nicolas Flamel, a brilliant French alchemist… He's good friends with Albus, has been for decades… It was brought here after some thief attempted to steal it from Gringotts."

Harry mouthed 'I knew it!' victoriously, and Hermione couldn't argue.

"Apparently," continued the Hat, "several Professors have been asked to help put protections around the Stone to stall an intruder long enough for Dumbledore to catch up to him and defeat him. Only Professors, too. (Sigh) It's not like the thousand-year-old magical being that has the wisdom of all four Founders combined could possibly help them in any way, is it?… Ah well."

* * *

The two children, having learned all they could, said goodbye to the Hat and made their way back to the Gryffindor quarters undisturbed. Ron had already fallen asleep and so they too went to bed, but Harry couldn't find peace, twisting and turning in his bed. _Something_ was bothering him. With a start, he realized that Professor Dumbledore's absence (which they had so eagerly awaited to put Operation Sorting Hat into motion) was also the perfect opportunity for Quirrell and Riddle to go after the Philosopher's Stone.

Tip-toeing out of the boys' dormitory, he stood at the edge of the girls' and called in Parseltongue for Hermione to join him. She wasn't asleep yet either, so it was thus only a matter of draping her robes over her pajamas and snatching her wand; and, shrouded in Harry's Cloak, off they went towards the mysterious Third Floor Corridor, whose door they found slightly ajar.

Inside, they recognized the humongous black mass of the Cerberus, fast asleep, a trap-door clearly visible next to its limp right paw. Harry was about to try sneaking past the snoozing behemoth when Hermione had a better idea. She left the boy to stand guard next to the door and ran off. A minute later, she returned with a looming green silhouette in toe — the Basilisk, eyes shut, whom the muggle-born witch had 'ordered' to come out of the Chamber. Sneaking past the three-headed dog unnoticed was obviously impossible for her, but a fierce guardian though it may have been, the Cerberus was not suicidal; after a yip and a growl, it cowered in a corner of his room, doing its best not to anger the unspeakably dangerous serpent.

Hermione opened the trapdoor and then stepped aside.

{ _Great Basilisk?_ } she asked. { _Have a look inside, please. I know there's no one down there, so it's alright, but I can't quite make things out, and your noble kind can see in the dark…_ }

{ _Clever as ever!_ } complimented the snake before putting her head through the rectangular opening. A few seconds later came the snake's hissed report:

{ _There was a plant down there, Hermione Granger, but my Gaze caused it to shrivel and die before I could close my eyes._ }

Curious, Hermione peeked into the room below.

{ _Oh! That plant was a Devil's Snare, Basilisk_ }, she recognized from the dry remains littering the floor. { _We're lucky you killed it — they're quite dangerous. But — oh dear, now, the ceiling is so high that without the plan to cushion us… how can we get down?_ }

{ _I think I know!…_ } smirked Harry after a moment.

* * *

"Weeeeeee!" went both children as they slid down the one-of-a-kind slide that was the back of Salazar Slytherin's Basilisk.

Again they sent the Basilisk scouting ahead, and they learned that, #1, the next room contained flying keys, and, #2, flying keys were not immune to a Basilisk's Gaze. Whether they were 'dead' or Petrified was hard to tell, but either way, unmoving winged keys were littering the stone floor when the young wizard and witch entered the room after the Basilisk. Judging from the next door and its oversized keyhole, it was clear _one_ of the keys was the right one needed to progress further. This conundrum didn't stall them for long.

"Accio Right Key!" incanted Hermione, and they passed into the next chamber without much trouble.

It was a gigantic chessboard. Hermione paled.

"Oh God…" she deduced with much anguish. "We're supposed to play our way across! And even now Ron is fast asleep…"

"Hey! I'm not a bad chess-player either, you know!" complained Harry.

{ _Human children?_ } called the Basilisk. { _I could simply smash our way through these enchanted pieces of stone, you do realize._ }

{ _Oh… right._ } said Hermione.

A few minutes of chaos later, the enchanted chess-pieces were lying helplessly across the room on their back, some in pieces or cracked by the Basilisk's destructive feat of strength.

{ _You may pass_ }, the snake said simply.

Harry and Hermione thanked the snake and passed through a room where a gigantic troll lay prone on the stone floor, knocked out cold. Then was a room separated from the next by a wall of fire. Vials and bottles sat nearby, as well as a parchment inscribed with a riddle (which apparently told one which bottles contained poison, nettle wine, and the actual potion needed to go through he door). While Hermione got to work solving it, the Basilisk curiously put her fireproof, scaly muzzle through the flaming gate.

She withdrew it immediately, and, in a shaking voice, told the children:

{ _Ahem… you… may want to have a look on the other side._ }

* * *

"Well, _Potter_?" sneered Professor Snape. "Would you mind explaining _how_ in Pyrrhus Ocelot's name you and your toothy muggle-born _girlfriend_ somehow found yourself in the same room as a petrified hybrid of the Dark Lord and one of your own _teachers_?"

Harry was obviously about to lash out against the recently-arrived Snape, who was, to be fair, clearly looking for friction. Hermione, recognizing the warning signs, answered in his place:

"Well, it all began with Professor Quirrell's turban giving Harry a headache."

Snape raised his hand, wordlessly telling her to wait for a moment. The black-haired warlock darted into the previous room, and came back out holding the bottle of nettle vine.

"…Carry on." he said with a defeated look.

"At first," Hermione continued with a tale expertly weaving truth and lies, "I thought it was a joke, but then the turban spoke Parseltongue — well, I _thought_ it was the turban speaking — and we heard it talk about stealing the Philosopher's Stone, which we guessed had to be what Professor Dumbledore was guarding here with the Cerberus, you see. And so we followed Professor Quirrell into the corridor tonight, because we knew with Professor Dumbledore missing it was a golden opportunity for Quirrell and the turban, who was called Riddle. We found most challenges already disarmed and reached this room just in time to see Professor Quirrell lose his temper and cast some curse at the Mirror. It bounced back right onto him and petrified him. Now that it was safe, I tried to take the evil Riddle turban off poor Professor Quirrell, using the Summoning Spell. As you can see, the turban turned out to be quite normal, and instead Riddle was directly possessing the back of Quirrell's head. That was about when you burst into the room yourself."

Hermione breathed all of three times through this entire tale, but oddly enough, Snape was the one who seemed out of breath.

"Miss Granger — Mr Potter —" he asked, his voice confused, shaking and disbelieving, not even bothering to inquire how it was that both of these absurd Gryffindors were apparently Parselmouths. "Are you really unaware of this… _Tom Riddle_ 's true identity?"

"I… guess so?" said Harry, who really didn't like where this was going.

"Tom Riddle… became known… as Lord Voldemort." said Snape in a mix of fear and awe.

"Oh, good! Hagrid was right, then!" said Harry with a smile. "He _was_ still out there!"

"That is… _one_ way to put it…" hesitated Snape.

"What are you so frightened about?" asked Harry. "He's been defeated, hasn't he?"

Staring at the frozen, noseless scowl on the back of Quirrell's head, Snape whispered with great sadness:

"I hope so, Potter… I truly do."

* * *

"Yes, my friends," Professor Dumbledore announced the following evening at dinner, "I'm saddened to be the bearer of bad news, but it is my grim duty to announce you the passing of our friend Professor Quirinius Quirrell… A most terrible case of Vanishing Sickness, you see… we only found his turban."

From their table, Harry and Hermione shared a knowing smile with Ron (who still hadn't found his rat, but, on the flip-side, had been told the amusing tale of the previous night's adventure), while the rest of the students stared in surprise and confusion.

"On another note," Dumbledore added, "I would like to reiterate that the Third Floor Corridor is out of bounds, and will remain so for the foreseeable future."

Immediately after this not-so-innocent tangent, rumors started about the Cerberus having eaten Professor Quirrell.

"And now, I wish you all the best of luck on your final exams!"

This time only Hermione smiled out of the trio.


	5. Summer Interlude

**AUTHOR'S NOTE** **:** _Just a little something extra in-between the previous chapter and the beginning of Second Year, I hope you like it!_

 **Summer Interlude**

"So — what are you going to do about your relatives this summer, Harry?"

"Yeah", added Ron. "Surely you can't go back there with how they treat you… Merlin knows it's hard enough living with the Twins, I can't imagine what i'd be like with a trio of muggle bullies!"

"Don't you give the Twins as good as you get, though?" asked Harry.

"I did," said Ron mournfully, but I think… I think I'm going to stop with the pranks before the whole thing gets out of hand and one of us blows up the house."

"Why bravo, Ron," Hermione congratulated the red-head. "That's very responsible of you."

"Thanks," answered Ron half-heartedly. "…Wait. Harry, don't you change the subject! We were talking about _your_ holidays!"

"Ah, uhm…" said Harry, looking away. "Well… I guess I'll just… go back… to P… Privet Drive… I mean, it's not _that_ bad…"

"Out of the question," ruled Hermione. Not with how they treat you. Or at least, get them to behave!"

"But Hermione, I can't!" pleaded Harry. "It's not allowed, y'know? Ban on Underage Magic! _You_ 're the one who told me about that!"

"Silly Harry," chuckled Hermione. "That's just _wanded_ magic, if you catch my drift… Look, here's what I'll do. I'll get my parents to pick you up and we'll go to a pet store…"

* * *

"So, Uncle Vernon, I know you don't want to do the cooking yourself, but I'm just not feeling like it this morning… I have owls to send, you know how it is…"

"WH-WHATEVER YOU SAY, BOY! JUST KEEP THAT - THAT _VIPER_ AWAY FROM ME!"

"Tsk tsk. He's a _krait_ , thank you very, much. But fine, I'll call him off for now. { _Thank you, Kaiser, you can go back inside your burrow now. I'll bring you some chicken meat later._ }


	6. A New Riddle

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Boy, that was quick! This chapter just seemed to write itself for some reason. I will also reiterate my thanks to anyone who reviewed, especially positively! It's a balm for this old snake's heart. Anyway… to ever quicker future updates!_

 **Chapter V: A New Riddle**

Hermione's summer was spent in as muggle a way as she could manage. Marcus Moonshine's _Treaty on the Muggle-Born_ indicated that a lot of muggle-born witches and wizards gradually adopted a wizarding lifestyle and culture, to the point that they ended up feeling inadequate in non-magical company. Hermione certainly wanted no such thing to happen to her, and so she focused on muggle subjects for her summer studies, and forced herself to avoid thinking too much about Hogwarts.

The exception, of course, had been the letters to and from her friends. Harry's relatives, he wrote in a letter delivered through the muggle post, had been appropriately put under control by her little idea. Meanwhile, Ron informed her that things were as well as they could be in the Weasley household. The Twins had only pulled the expected single, final prank on him (to have the last laugh in their little prank-war), their sister Ginny was extremely excited about going to Hogwarts, and Mr Arthur Weasley himself was exuberant at finally passing his Muggle Protection Act. The only sour note was the ongoing case of the disappearing Scabbers. Ron hoped against hope that they'd find him comfy and cozy at Hogwarts come September, but everyone was beginning to come to terms with the probable fact of the old rodent's demise.

Hermione also took advantage of the holidays to rekindle friendships with the local snakes. She found with some dismay that an old adder living in the Grangers' garden hadn't made it through the winter. Dutifully, she held a small, private funeral for the old boy (she'd have invited the other neighborhood snakes, but she knew too well they'd probably try to eat their former companion's remains, and she had a feeling he wouldn't have wanted it this way). On a happier note, a younger female grass-snake she got along rather well with had laid a host of awfully cute eggs in the Grangers' neighbours' compost heap in mid-July, and Hermione was a bit sad that she wouldn't be there to see the newborns hatch.

For indeed, eventually, with September fast approaching, she turned her thoughts back to magical study, arranging for her, her parents and the Weasleys to all go shopping in Diagon Alley together. Entering through the muggle side of the _Leaky Cauldron_ along with Daniel and Sally, she found Harry and the Weasleys already out in the open on the other side, Harry and Ron arguing quite fiercely. Something about each boy having apparently ignored the other's owls all summer.

"Boys! Boys!" she interrupted.

"Oh, hi Hermione!" chorused the two friends.

"Yes, hello, and before you ask, I'm quite alright thank you, and what exactly is the matter with you two?"

"Well," Harry began, "I haven't gotten any of Ron's supposed many letters-"

"I think you ought to say _supposedly numerous,_ " interrupted the girl.

"Hermione!" gently scolded Dr Daniel Granger, putting his hand on his daughter's shoulder. "You shouldn't correct other people on small mistakes during conversations. It's not at all polite."

"Oh, hm, sorry dad," said Hermione.

Having noticed their presence, Mr Weasley practically jumped to the elder Gangers' side and began to grill them with questions about muggle customs. This left the children free to chat on their way between shops.

"Now, let's keep things straight. Ron, you say you wrote Harry. Through Owl Post, yes?"

"Uhuh. Good letters, they were, too. I mean, maybe my spelling wasn't the best, but you know. And yeah, Mum had the family owl deliver them… he's getting a bit old, Errol, but he never failed to deliver a letter, and he came back not looking any worse than usual from those deliveries…"

"Yes, yes, I don't need that sort of detail. And Harry, you wrote Ron as well? Through Owl Post too?"

"Well, yes… I couldn't write Ron the muggle way, because, well, even if I knew the Weasley's address I'm not sure it's even on the muggles' books."

"True. That is actually a pretty interesting idea… I'll have to research it. Do wizards have legal identity on the muggle side…?"

"Hermione. Focus." corrected Harry.

"Oh, thank you. I'm sorry… Old habits die hard and all that. So, Harry, have you no idea if someone could have interrupted your mail?"

"Bloody hell, I almost forgot…" said Harry, hitting his forehead.

"Yes?" Hermione and Ron both inquired.

"There was this weird little blighter… he looked a bit like Peeves, if Peeves had a real body, and you replaced all of his bad jokes with a weird fixation on thanking everyone he spoke to. So yeah, not _really_ Peeves, but… ah, you just had to be there. Point is, he was called Dobby, and he just _popped_ into my bedroom in the middle of the night and began blabbering about an evil plot at Hogwarts."

"Something to do with the Riddling Turban?" asked Hermione, biting her lip. She would be lying if she said she hadn't occasionally worried about Voldemort somehow snapping out of his Petrification, ever since she'd learned who Tom Riddle really was.

"No, it was one of the first things I asked… Apparently it was an 'ancient evil' sleeping 'beneath the Castle'. So of course I asked if he meant the Basilisk, and he began hitting himself on the head with a hammer — I'm still not sure _where_ he got the hammer, to be honest — in a way that seemed to mean 'yes'. I think. So I told him I'm friends with her, and she's not really evil, but he wouldn't believe me until I showed him how I could talk to the krait. After that, he looked at me and I still can't tell if it was fear or awe. Then he gushed some more and he popped away."

"That all sounds like a House-Elf to me," supplied Ron. "Mum sometimes laments that we can't afford one."

"Afford?" asked Hermione, overcome with a peculiar sense of dread. She was, however, ignored as Harry continued:

"Elf? Yes, I guess he might have mentioned something like that… The point is, I wouldn't put it past that weirdo to have been intercepting my mail for whatever reason. Maybe he thought I'd forget Hogwarts was a thing if I didn't get letters from you guys, or something like that. He didn't seem quite right in the head. Nice, but not right in the head."

"Yes, that's probably it," concluded Hermione, still filing away the matter of House-Elves for further research.

As they passed the Potions Shop, they accidentally bumped into Professor Snape, who delivered his first hissing scowl for the year, seemed about to mouth 'Ten points from Gryffindor' before he remembered where he was, and then left briskly.

Harry gulped theatrically.

"Looks like we're in for another _long_ year of Potions," he lamented.

"Harry, have you tried straightening things out with him?" asked Hermione. "About your father and everything, like we'd guessed."

"Well, yeah, actually." Harry defended himself. "You were in the Library at the time, but I happened to meet him in the corridors and I tried getting his attention, telling him I'm not that different from my father… at least based on what Professor McGonagall and Hagrid had to say. That didn't seem to make him any happier, though. He docked me twenty points for that!"

"Huh. I was… wrong, then… I suppose." answered Hermione.

It seemed mouthing those words was still painful for her, but it was a definite improvement, in her two friends'. A year earlier, she wouldn't have dreamed to admit she had been wrong. Not publicly like this. Still, she changed the subject quickly:

"Oh, this reminds me. Ron, { _have you been practicing Snake-Speak?_ }"

{ _I have done, that!_ } answered Ron proudly. { _Fed and Gorge, thinked it was weird, …but Ginny, she thinked it has a very awesome, though!_ }

{ _Well done!_ } said Hermione, and she pecked him on the cheek, to his absolute surprise (not that he minded). { _You've made a lot of progress. Do brush up your preterit, though._ }

"Oh, uhm, thanks… I will, Hermione." stammered the flustered redhead.

Harry, pretending to be offended, began ask why _he_ didn't get a kiss for dealing with the crazy elf-thing so swiftly, but the joke was cut short when the little group actually arrived at _Flourish & Blotts_ — or rather, in _front_ of _Flourish & Blotts_; the problem was precisely that a crowd prevented entry into the bookshop where their textbooks for this year (which were rather numerous, especially the Defence books, all written by some expert called Gilderoy Lockhart) were to be found.

As it turned out, the crowd was, as a matter of fact, gathered here to witness a public appearance by Lockhart himself, whom Molly Weasley (tearing herself away from the conversation between her husband and the Grangers) explained was an unparalleled wizarding adventurer who had fought all sorts of monsters all over the world and written a very exciting book series about it. Lockhart was also very handsome and very charming… or at least, from a distance. The more you looked at him, the more vapid and full of himself he seemed, and this culminated in him publicly embarrassing poor Harry who obviously wanted nothing to do with him. All in all, Hermione didn't know what to think when Lockhart announced himself as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor — if he really was that good, he would certainly be a step up from Quirrell, but was a bottomless bag of concentrated ego like Lockhart's really less obnoxious than a stuttering moron, if you had to endure their lectures for an entire year? That remained to be seen.

The day didn't get any better when the Malfoys (junior and senior) bumbled onto the scene and had a row with the Weasleys. Fortunately, Harry revealed the presence of the Krait inside his backpack, scaring Draco away from him (the would-be bully didn't seem like he could take a hint even after a whole year of being bullied). Unable to get at Harry, the blond boy fell back to weak, repetitive insults against Hermione's parentage and big teeth.

"Well," she replied calmly to that last taunt, "I'll have to know it's a big help for pronouncing Parseltongue."

With the look of someone who'd seen a Dementor, Draco staggered away, dragging his father behind him with a promise that he had something very important to tell them.

In the end, all required schoolbooks were purchased, and the Grangers were invited to spend the evening with the Weasleys. The trip was achieved through the Floo Network. Hermione had read about it (of course), but her excitement died down after she determined travelling by Floo was no less uncomfortable than Apparation.

At dinner, Hermione decided to sit next to the youngest girl, Ginny, trying to figure out why the redhead hadn't stopped glaring at her throughout the day. Being Hermione, she achieved this by asking Ginny why she'd been glaring at her throughout the day.

"Wh-no-but…" stammered Ginny, losing her countenance.

Fred, sitting opposite Hermione, explained between mouthfuls of Molly Weasley's excellent food:

"Well… not to be indiscrete or anything, dear Miss Granger, but it would appear that our honored sister Ginevra has a bit of a sweet spot for a certain Boy Who Lived… not to name names or anything."

"Then why isn't she looking at _him_?" asked the Parselmouth sheepishly.

"Oh, I don't know…" answered George mischievously. "Could it be a little thing called jealousy? You _are_ the girl Harry chatted with every day for a whole year."

"Now you two!" said Ginny, regaining all of her fiery determination. "I'm not above turning these hexes you taught me back against you if you say ONE. MORE. WORD."

"Eh? What's that, Ginny dear? Hexes?" Mrs Weasley barely managed to ask before she was swept back into the grown-ups' heated conversation (Mr Ganger was doing his best to explain the theory of radioactivity to an enraptured Arthur).

"That's ridiculous!" said Hermione, ignoring Molly's remark like everybody else. "I don't like Harry in _that_ way, and I'm… pretty sure he doesn't either. We're just friends who do friend things together with Ron. You know. Study together, play chess, fight Tom Riddle the Hissing Turban… oh, I assume Ron told you all about that?"

"Oh yeah!" said Ginny, her anger and jealously suppressed by friendly envy of Hermione's adventures. "Even the you-know-who from the Chamber of you-know-whats… and don't worry, I know I mustn't tell dad. I'm not crazy."

"Have you tried learning a bit of Parseltongue?" whispered Hermione.

"Nah." answered the other girl. "Ron's a good brother but he isn't the best teacher, and he tells me he's not that good at it yet anyway. I wouldn't be against it if you offered, though. …Say, do you think I'll get to adventure with you three this year?"

"Maybe, maybe not." said Hermione thoughtfully. "It probably wouldn't be against the Turban this time, though, unless somebody breaks him out of the Corridor."

"Oh! That reminds me!" Ginny said. "I've got something I need to show you! Mom, can I go up really quick? There's something in my room I want to show Hermione!"

"Wha-uh, yes, run along, dear, glad you're making friends - _an entire city_ , you say? Heavens!" said Molly, still caught up in the conversation with the Grangers.

When Ginny came down (and it _was_ quick; a real little human lightning bolt, that girl), she was cradling a black leather-bound diary. She cracked it open and revealed the name on the front page, in terrifyingly neat handwriting.

 _T. M. Riddle_

"Ron. Harry," she called conspiringly across the table, breaking off the two's Quidditch chit-chat. "Riddle meeting after dinner. With Ginny. Important."

The two bewildered boys gave a sharp nod and shared a look of incomprehension before getting back into their previous conversation.

* * *

Once the four children had finished eating Molly's delicious dessert, they darted off to Ginny's room (which she had paid the Twins in candy to rather solidly enchant against eavesdropping).

"So… Riddle meeting?…" asked Ron dubiously. "What, the bugger's broken out?"

"I don't _think_ so," answered Hermione. "But look what Ginny found… well, actually, where _did_ you find it?…"

Ginny showed the diary, with its dreaded signature, to the two boys, and explained:

"Well, it was in my cauldron along with all my schoolbooks when we came back from the Alley. At first I thought Mum had bought it, but in retrospect, I think Mr Malfoy may have slipped it in for some reason."

"Uh? Why?" asked Harry and Hermione together.

"Because everybody knows Malfoy worked for You-Know-Who back in the day!" answered Ron and Ginny as if it were self-evident.

"Uh?" asked Hermione. "That's not in _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts,_ or in _The History of the Dark Lord's War_ , or in-"

"Well, of course it's not," Ginny answered with a dry smile. "Malfoy paid off everyone who matters to quietly forget all about it. Officially, the only times he was seen obeying He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's order, he was under some sort of mind-control curse called the Imperius. Everybody knows that's ridiculous, though."

"Yeah," added Ron. "If there's anyone out of Azkaban right now who wouldn't mind slaughtering muggles all day, it's Lucius Malfoy."

"Slaughtering muggles…?" repeated Harry, not understanding what Ron was getting at.

"Honestly, Harry," scolded Hermione, "haven't you read anything about Voldemort? It's in all the books. No one knows if he bought into it himself, but he told his followers they'd be free to torture all muggles and muggle-born wizards if he won the war. He exploited pure-blood wizards' racism and bigotry and recruited anywhere from the slums of Knockturn Alley to rich businessmen like Lucius Malfoy…"

"Hey, we Weasleys are pureblood too!" complained Ron and Ginny.

"But you're not racist, are you?" countered Harry.

"Wha-no!"

"Everyone! Focus!" said Hermione to defuse the rising argument. "It doesn't really matter why Malfoy gave us that notebook. The point is, what does it do? Surely it's not just an ordinary book, what would be the point? Maybe it's cursed!"

"Bloody hell, you're right!" said Ginny with a panicked look. "Maybe it kills anyone who writes in it or something — and to think I'd have tried writing in it tonight if you hadn't reminded me — thank you!"

"Hm, don't mention it." said Hermione absent-mindedly. "But then how are we going to test that theory?"

"I know just the thing!" said Ginny with a grin. She fished out a raggedy quill from inside one of her drawers. "Dad's old Dicta-Quill. It writes anything you dictate. He gave it to me after he bought a new one. It's a bit old, so it occasionally makes spelling mistakes or things like that, but it'll be fine for a little test."

"Excellent," congratulated Hermione. "Alright. Everyone prepare for Operation Cursed Diary. Ginny, open the book, yes, that's right. Now put it down on the bed… put the Dicta-Quill on it, ready to write something. Right. Now let's all take a few steps back… Farther than that, Ron, do you _want_ to get your brains cursed into potato mash?… Yes, good. Fine. Now nobody speak but me, please. Let's try to get a coherent message across. Ginny, how do you activate it?"

"You say 'Quill, Take This Down'. Got that?" said Ginny.

As it turned out, Hermione didn't need to have 'got that', because the Dicta-Quill heard her and instantly rose at attention. Hermione nodded and the three other children did so as well.

"Testing, testing." she said as clearly as possible.

Across the room, the enchanted quill began scribbling:

 _ **Test is, testing.**_

No explosion engulfed the magical object, but after a few seconds the ink was soaked into the paper, leaving the page just as white as before.

After making sure nothing else was happening, Hermione said:

"Is this going to disappear as well?"

The quill dutifully took it down, albeit with a blot in the middle.

 _ **Is this going**_ ** _•, to disappear as well?_**

It did.

But this time, the ink bled back out after a moment, forming new words in big enough handwriting for Ginny's sharp eyesight to decipher:

 _ **Yes it is**_ , said the new words. _**That is how this Diary works, you see. Hello. My name is Tom Riddle. Who are you?**_

"My name is… Hermia Pockle," answered Hermione, opting for an alias. No reason to give their probable-enemy her real name. "Glad to meet you."

Once the Dicta-Quill had finished relaying the message, Riddle answered:

 _ **Likewise, Miss Pockle. May I ask how you came about my Diary?**_

"That's not important right now," answered Hermione pressingly. "How are you responding to me, Mr Riddle? Is this diary connected to another one in your possession?"

 **D _ear me, no_** , came Riddle's answer, _**though that would be a clever system indeed, Miss Pockle. Rather, my spirit truly inhabits the Diary. Somewhat like a Portrait, I suppose. Oh, and please, call me Tom.**_

Hermione and the others shared a scared look.

"But you did use to be a flesh-and-blood person, didn't you?" asked Hermione.

 _ **I'd… rather not discuss it,**_ answered the Riddle of the Diary, its handwriting slightly shakier.

Hermione couldn't quite make up her mind whether this was genuine, or clever manipulation. Not that it would help Riddle much, either way.

Before she could reply with another carefully-crafted question, however, Harry took over, in an angry tone:

"Now look here, Riddle! I don't know how you escaped the Third-Floor Corridor, but if you think you can get on the back on my head just by putting yourself into another wacky object, you have another thing coming!"

There was a long pause before the Riddle of the Diary's reply, which Hermione spent glaring angrily at Harry.

 _ **I'm afraid I do not see what you mean. Am I to take it you have come across another object claiming to contain my spirit? I swear that I, that is to say the self inside this Diary, has never met you before… Miss Pockle.**_

"That wasn't me who said that, Tom," said Hermione, trying to salvage the situation. "That was my… brother, Harry. He thinks you're a prank from one of our 'enemies'… a bully called Terry Riddle."

 _ **Ah…**_ answered the Diary. _**Strange. Your handwriting and 'Harry''s seemed identical to me.**_

"That's because we're using a Dicta-Quill, Tom."

 _ **Oh, I see, yes. Well, Sally, as long as you keep Harry away from me, I would very much like to become your friend, a secret friend. I am, after all, a Diary, and that is therefore my purpose.**_

"I… think I'd like that, Tom", answered Hermione, not missing Riddle's shift from 'Miss Pockle' to 'Sally'. Trying to gain his trust, was he, the Slytherin of a turban?

 _ **Good! Just one thing, however. For… personal reasons, I'd prefer it if, in the future, you used your true handwriting rather than a Dicta-Quill.**_

"Look," said Hermione, "I'll see what I can do, but I've got to go now. Good-bye, Tom!"

 _ **I will be waiting**_ , came Riddle's final message before fading away.

The four young wizards and witches looked at each other and at the Diary.

"Okay, what do we do?"


	7. Return to Hogwarts

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Another quick update! I'm on a roll, fellows. Not much happening in this chapter, but that was inevitable — got to set things up, as it were. I hope I do Gilderoy Lockhart all the injustice that he deserves._

 **Chapter VI: Return to Hogwarts**

It being the only thing they _could_ realistically do, the children decided to stuff the bewitched diary into Harry's trunk, wrapped in his Invisibility Cloak, and to go check on the petrified Quirrell-Riddle hybrid in the Third Floor Corridor as soon as possible. If the petrified would-be Janus was missing, they'd know the Diary had been lying, and they'd keep an even closer watch on it. If it was still there, they'd just put the diary next to it — if this corridor could hold one of Voldemort, it could certainly hold two.

For indeed, as a matter of fact, the time to return to Hogwarts came a few days later. Arthur Weasley flew all of his children, plus Harry and Hermione, to King's Cross Station, aboard a very interesting artifact he had enchanted himself. It was a very non-standard sort of artifact, being that it was, in fact, a Ford Anglia, but it was fascinating to Hermione nonetheless — not least of which because it seemed to have a mind of its own, just like the Sorting Hat and 'Goldie' the Griffin.

The ride aboard the Hogwarts Express wasn't as peaceful as the children had hoped. Hermione realized too late that the secret of her being a Parselmouth, which he had so carelessly revealed to Draco earlier, had already spread like wildfire through the student body (a few owls went a long way). She thus spent the entire ride being harassed by stupid kids who wanted to hear her hiss. It was fun at first but quickly got boring, and the rumor that she was Voldemort's illegitimate daughter was just _rude_. There were only two visitors to otherwise stand out of the mass. The first was the newly-christened 'Professor' Lockhart, who burst into their compartment, cutting through the crowd with useless motions of his wand:

"DEAR FANS!" he bellowed. "You have been deceived! I, the great Gilderoy Lockhart, for whom this crowd has no doubt gathered, am not actually in this compartment."

Someone in the back (a small kid with a camera) pointed out that he _was_ , actually.

"Well, I am _now_. How very perspicacious of you," retorted Lockhart with a forced smile that most of the children still found charming. "However, I have only come here to reroute my sprawling fanbase back whence I came, that is to say my actual, luxuriously-furnished compartment towards the front."

Before anyone could even begin to explain his mistake to the handsome hare-brain of a wizard, Kaiser peeked out of Harry's bag.

"Argh!" enunciated Lockhart with mostly-fake emotion, striking a pose with his wand. "A fell beast has attacked the defenseless Boy Who Lived! The horror!"

Although a few students had recoiled upon seeing the krait, most were just confused. Lockhart went on:

"Ah, but Fate smiles upon the Conqueror of the Dark Lord, for another hero, dare I say an even greater one, happened to be passing by… Gilderoy Lockhart! ME!"

He flashed a smile at the audience. Most were still completely aghast, but a few of the younger, more impressionable students were starting to be taken in. Hermione huffed.

"As I am the Defence Professor, it is my solemn _duty_ to… hahah! Defend! Watch and learn, children, if you ever hope to match my greatness!"

With unbelievably overdramatic, swooping motions of his intricately-adorned wand, on which Hermione only now noticed he had applied _golden varnish_ , Lockhart tried some sort of curse on Kaiser.

" _Viperus Evanesco!_ " he declaimed in what Hermione knew was quite dreadful Latin.

Kaiser absolutely failed to vanish as Lockhart probably meant him to. However, the attention was starting to get to him, and he retreated back inside Harry's bag in annoyance.

After a moment of incertitude, Lockhart exclaimed:

"Hah-hah! Just as I, the Great Gilderoy Lockhart, planned! Observe: it is the virtue of the victor to be merciful, my young friends. I could have blasted that slithering serpent into ash with a snap, but instead I chose a controlling spell for a peaceful outcome. Now the Boy Who Lived his saved, the snake is alive, and you all are one spell _and_ one moral lesson richer. A happy ending worthy of… Gilderoy Lockhart! Hah-hah!"

Completely forgetting why he'd come here in the first place, the selfish blabbermouth of a wizard-adventurer strode out of the room with these 'uplifting parting words':

"Remember, children — you may see me all year at the hours your time-tables will indicate, and, to boot, for a fair price, read all about my numerous adventures in my book series, _The Adventures of Gilderoy Lockhart_ , by Gilderoy Lockhart. Seven novels, one play, an autobiography, three textbooks, and counting! Cheers!"

While most of the children and teenagers present tried to shake off the weird confusion that had settled in their mind from Lockhart's little stint, a sizable enough portion had turned over to his side and left the compartment, giving everyone else a little bit of elbow room.

This also allowed a strange first-year girl to make her way to the very edge of the crowd in the compartment — the second odd character this ride would yield. Things began innocently enough.

"Hi! I'm Luna Lovegood, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter. So, I hear you are Parselmouths?"

" _Yes._ " groaned the annoyed Harry, who never appreciated being put into the limelight. "I'm a Parselmouth, Hermione's a Parselmouth, Ron's a Parselmouth, sort of, hell, _he'_ s a Parselmouth!…" (he was pointing at Kaiser) "EVERYBODY'S A PARSELMOUTH, THE RUMORS ARE TRUE. _NOW GO AWAY._ "

"Oh, but I always knew the rumors were true," said Luna. "They always are. I mean, I don't have to go ask Minister Fudge to know he's part of the Rotfang Conspiracy. It's common knowledge."

"Oh?" said Hermione, making a mental note to research this Rotfang Conspiracy. "Then why did you need to come and talk to us?"

"Mostly because I want to learn Parseltongue too." answered the dreamy girl.

That wasn't exactly _new_ (at least two others, Ravenclaws, naturally, had asked the same thing), but it was certainly interesting enough.

"And why is that?" asked Ginny (who was feeling left out as the only person in the conversation who neither was a Parselmouth or had any intention to learn).

"I have a hunch Slither-Necked Snorkacks can understand it too," answered the girl as if that explained everything.

"Oh, really? What's a Slither-Necked Snorkack, then?" asked Hermione.

"Well, no one's really sure, you see," Luna explained, "because no one's ever seen one. However, there are records of sightings of Crumple-Horned Snorkack with an unusually slithery neck, producing a faint hissing sort of noise. It is my belief, as well as that of my father, that these constitute a separate breed of Snorkack, whom we theorize may be native to Scotland."

"Uh… what's a Crumple-Horned Snorkack?" asked Hermione.

"That's also a bit of a mystery," said Luna. "What we know is that it's a Snorkack, it lives in Sweden, and it doesn't have a horned — well, it does, but you can't see it, because it's all _crumpled_."

" _What's a Snorkack_?" asked Hermione. The girl was simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen to her in months: she raised a hundred questions and answered them all with more questions that she answered, too, _ad infinitum_.

"Well, it's an animal, obviously. Sort of like a cross of a nargle and a chess piece, with bits and pieces of a bugbear thrown in. Also, it glows purple in the moonlight."

"What's a nargle?"

"Glad you asked, Hermione Granger. Nargles are the mistletoe-dwelling relatives of the Australian Slashkilters…"

Another reason Luna Lovegood was the best thing that had happened to Hermione so far that day was that after a few minutes of listening in on their conversation, and with no sign of it stopping anytime soon, the other paparazzi withdrew from the compartment, clutching their foreheads. Harry, Ron and Ginny had a somewhat similar reaction, but Hermione wouldn't let them leave. (Kaiser was just taking a nap inside Harry's bag. It's not like he understood human speech, anyway.)

* * *

For Ginny and Luna's sakes, the three friends attended the Sorting Feast. Luna, as per the laws of the alphabet, was the first to go. Wearing her usual dreamy smile, she began mind-chatting with the also-smiling Hat, and Hermione could just _see_ they were going to be here for a _long_ time if (as she should have foreseen) Luna was indeed to type to encourage the Hat. After twelve agonizing minutes, Professor McGonagall walked closer to the Sorting Stool, looking worried.

"Hat, is everything alright?" she asked.

"What? Yes, yes; whatever are you doing here, Minerva?" answered the Hat with its real-life voice. (Luna didn't acknowledge McGonagall's presence and just kept smiling.)

"You should know, Hat, after so many years, that as the Deputy Headmistress it is my duty and privilege to attend, and even host, the Sorting Ceremony."

"Sorting?…" repeated the Hat sheepishly. "Oh! Yes! The Sorting! Forgive me, I had quite forgotten, young Miss Lovegood makes such good conversation!… Now where am I going to put you, then, Luna?"

McGonagall staggered out of sight.

It took four more minutes, and another reminder to the Hat of what it was supposed to do, for Luna to be Sorted away into "RAVENCLAW, and do drop in at any time, we'll have crumpets".

Several students later, Ginny's Sorting into 'GRYFFINDOR' went orders of magnitude more smoothly, although it wasn't wholly normal either, as Ginny came back with a message from the Hat for Hermione — general greetings and wishes of good luck, but it was rare enough as it was.

Following the Sorting, Professor Dumbledore had something or two to say.

"Ahem! Students, teachers, ghosts, portraits, gargoyles, ants, and whoever else may be listening — I have a few start-of-term notices to give all of you. The first is that Mr Filch has once again asked me to remind you that his list of banned enchanted items, which can be found pinned on the door to his office, is as binding as the rest of the school rules. I hope we are all clear."

Ron looked sheepish while Fred and George seemed absolutely outraged.

"First years should note that the Forbidden Forest is forbidden to all pupils. That is the main reason it is called Forbidden. Were it not forbidden, I daresay that it would be called the Permitted Forest."

A few snickers and a few gasps followed that announcement.

"Also for the benefit of first year students, the Third Floor Corridor is out-of-bounds except to those who wish to suffer a most terrible death. I will add, to those who may think they have it all figured out, that the dangers inside are different from the ones that could be found there last year. This need not concern you, because, I reiterate as this is very important — you must never go there."

Percy and other older students were a bit surprised at Dumbledore's insistance compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, Dumbledore continued:

"An exception will be made on our long-standing policy not to use magic in the corridors…"

An uproar of joy cut off the wizard's sentence. He silenced it immediately with a flick of his wand, everyone finding themselves suddenly unable to produce any sound at all. He lifted the charm almost immediately, but the silence remained.

"…an exception, as I said," continued Dumbledore, "in case you should come across a certain animated statue in the likeness of a teenage chimpanzee. The creature is not truly menacing, but it is mischievous, and it is best to allow you to Stun it if you meet it, rather than have it get you late for class."

"Uhm, that's just Dumbledore being Dumbledore, right?" Hermione asked Percy.

"I'm afraid not," said Percy. "If what I hear is correct, Professor Lockhart thought the statue — which was originally mundane in nature — was a disguised Chameleon Ghoul. Whatever spell he cast to try and subdue it seems to have backfired and given the creature sentience."

"You can _accidentally_ give something sentience?"

"I didn't know you could, but, well, he's Gilderoy Lockhart. It's only natural that even his miscalculations should have spectacular, unheard-of effects."

That was _one_ way of looking at it. In fact, while she and Percy were discussing him, Dumbledore had introduced the newly-appointed Defence Professor to those few who did not know him — or rather, Dumbledore had barely named the man before Lockhart himself had upstaged him and gushed on and on about himself.

* * *

{ _Great Basilisk, we are back from vacation!_ } hissed Hermione through the second door of the Chamber of Secrets.

{ _Hermione Granger!_ } answered the somehow _deeper_ hiss of the Basilisk. { _I have waited for his moment for all Summer. My eyes are closed; you may come in._ }

"Right. Door, you { _open_ }." said Hermione.

The door obeyed, and she and Harry entered the Chamber. It was still the same as last year, if a bit less grimy, the Basilisk having apparently spent part of the summer cleaning up. Hermione thought it was rather nice, and hissed as much.

{ _Thank you, Hermione Granger,_ } answered the great serpent. { _I trust your Summer was pleasant enough as well?_ }

{ _Oh yes, it was quite wonderful_ ,} said Hermione. { _We have news, however. Possibly bad ones. Ginny Weasley, the sister of Ron,—_ }

{ _Does she Speak like her sibling?_ } asked the Basilisk eagerly.

{ _Uhm, no, but we have met someone who does. Or will, soon enough._ } Harry informed her, Luna Lovegood still fresh on his mind. The girl had caught them for an impromptu first lesson in Parseltongue in the corridor after dinner, delaying their visit down to the Chamber.

{ _That is good. I will be glad to meet her,_ } the Basilisk said. { _…but then, you were saying? About this Ginny Weasley?_ }

{ _Oh, yes. That,_ } Hermione was reminded. { _Well, Ginny found an enchanted Diary containing some sort of spirit. It claims to be a copy of Tom Riddle, or perhaps a piece of him, I am not quite sure. Would you happen to know anything about that?_ }

The Basilisk trembled, shaking her head violently, as if in denial. And then, with caustic tears running from her closed eyes, she hissed:

{ _I am sorry, Hermione Granger, I may not ever speak to you again. The Master ordered it so for anyone who inquired about the Diary, and as you know I cannot disobey._ } The torn Basilisk was choking. { _Farewell, friend._ }

Hermione teared up as well, instantly understanding the implications. Whatever the Diary was, it was one of Lord Voldemort's greatest secrets, important enough that he'd forbidden his Snake to interact with any who threatened it, for fear that she would give something away. It was a wonder she hadn't been ordered to kill them right there and then.

"Uhm… that's bad, right? Did I get that right?" asked Ron, who had been trying to follow the conversation but always did think Hermione spoke a bit too fast for him.

Fortunately, before the green giant could retire to reminisce alone about her lost friend, Harry spoke up, sounding rather happy with himself.

{ _Erm, Great Basilisk?_ } he said. { _I am sorry, I have absolutely no idea what you and Hermione were talking about just now. I won't ask, either._ }

Hermione looked at Harry with grateful, shiny eyes, and she heard the gigantic serpent slither back into view, stopping herself partway through muttering the phrase _Surely that won't work_ , which she had sworn never to say again in relation to the young wizards' ideas after last time.

{ _I cannot thank you enough, young wizard, thrice-blessed your quick wits. Now, speaking purely to Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, of course,_ } said the Basilisk, her hisses dripping with humor, _{and not to any muggle-born girl who may happen to be there; and bearing in mind that all of this is a tale with no relationship whatsoever to any notepad belonging to any Master of any sort…_ }

Hermione took out a piece of parchment and began taking notes. Ron tried to read them to help with his oral comprehension, but found with dismay they were a bunch of tiny squiggly scribbles. This puzzled the boy for a moment (Hermione's usual script being very regular and clean) until he realized this was what written Parseltongue looked like.

{ _…there was a b-,_ } told the Basilisk — but she found herself stumped at the B. { _There was a… youngling, who feared his end very much. When he had passed fifteen springs, he read from a book entitled -_ } (again she was stuck) { _-he read from a book most foul, a way ancient wizards had devised to ch- to… to work around the Final End. The youngling had a servant, a still-standing Speaker of a serpentine sort, whom he forced to do his bidding. Through the murder of M- of a girl in a bathroom, the servant… the servant provided the sacrifice that the youngling craved._ }

It didn't take a genius to puzzle that the 'servant' was the Basilisk herself, forced to carry out young Voldemort's evil bidding. And a girl in the bathroom… Hermione would have bet that was Moaning Myrtle.

The Basilisk continued her tale:

{ _For with arcane words and the harm of the murder, the child spl- divided his s- cut apart his ess- cut apart the core of his mind, you see. And one half was put in a D- in a certain notepad. For the book had said that as long as the half remained inside the object, even through the End, the youngling's… main self… would be anchored to the world of the living._ }

…

…

…

"Uh." said Harry. "Well. Guess that explains that."

{ _Don't worry,_ } said Hermione, looking intently at the Basilisk, { _and of course I am not speaking to this random Basilisk here, but to anyone else who might be listening, we have the Diary locked away safe and sound. He won't bother you._ }

* * *

After Professor McGonagall handed them their time-tables, the children realized it wouldn't be long before they had to face Gilderoy Lockhart within the enclosed space of a classroom. Ron, probably for the sake of argument, tried to reassure Hermione, who was throwing a bit of a tantrum about the constantly-dropping quality of DADA teachings:

"Look, maybe the git won't be _that_ bad."

* * *

Lockhart really _was_ just that bad. Worse, actually.

* * *

"No, Miss Granger, don't worry," said Professor Sprout. "Mandrakes are perfectly non-sentient. Their human-like behavior is just an illusion, a way to scare predators away."

"Oh. Thank Heavens."

(Since snake fangs were used as ingredients in several potions, Hermione thought wizards didn't have the best track record of paying sapient species all due respect. She thus thought her worries had been perfectly grounded in reality. Her classmates didn't seem to think the same way, though, if the way the Slytherins were snickering at her was any indication.)

* * *

Feeling a bit bad for how they'd neglected him the previous school-year, what with the constant Riddle meetings they had occupied their evenings with, Harry pressured the others into visiting Hagrid over the week-end. The gentle giant was overjoyed, although the three were in for a surprise — the notoriously hairy Keeper of the Keys' head was bald as a baby's, down to his bushy eyebrows, although stubble was starting to reappear where his bear should have been. They didn't know whether it'd upset their big friend to mention it and danced around the issue until Harry worked up the courage to ask about it. Hagrid looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, mumbled about a fireplace accident, and changed the topic.

Very curious.

But then, what could someone like Hagrid _possibly_ be hiding that they should be concerned about?


	8. The Corridor, Again

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Well then. As you can see, things are really off the canon rails now. Since the usual First-year Corridor Trials get boring after a while, I decided to try my hand at reimagining new tasks. What do you think?_

 **Chapter VII: The Corridor, Again**

Once again the weekend came, freeing Hermione, Harry and Ron of Gilderoy Lockhart and other assorted obligations. Thus, after retrieving Tom Riddle's Diary from Harry's trunk, they sneaked off to the Third Floor under the cover of Harry's Invisibility Cloak. Unfortunately, as was bound to happen at some point, the trio happened upon Mrs Norris, the Caretaker's cat catastrophe, who was quick to call down her master upon them.

Within a minute, Argus Filch jumped upon the scene marked by Mrs Norris, speedily stumbling through the roof to try and get his hands on the invisible trouble-makers. Dodging this crude approach would have been easy for a single student, but the three different people hiding under the single Cloak all tried to flee in different ways and ended up splitting off, the cloak remaining attached only to Harry's shoulders (though no longer hiding his head).

"Ah-hah!" gloated the victorious Filch. "There you are, you naughty little bastards! I knew you three had to be using some sort of invisibility watchamacallitt, I knew it, Dumbledore wouldn't hear me, but now I got ya! I'm-"

"You're what, exactly?" interrupted Hermione, the living picture of defiance.

"Uh, well I'm, uh… I am…" spluttered Filch. "…What?"

"I mean," continued Hermione on the same tone, "yes, you got us, bravo, hahah. Clever you. Now what are you going to _do_ about it?"

"Erm, uhm, ban invisibility-watchamacallitts?" Filch suggested weakly, taken aback.

"Well, it's invisible. We'll hide it," answered Hermione, still not backing down.

"But… I'll confiscate it _now_!" argued the scraggly man. "I'll punish ya! Give ya detention, I will!…"

"You can try." said Hermione.

"Eh?" said Filch.

{ _Harry, move behind him and hex him!_ } hissed Hermione very quickly before she continued to Filch in English: "You see, Mr Filch, you have made a crucial mistake. We are three talented wizards currently in possession of wands, whereas you, as I have noticed…"

" _Petrificus Totalus_!" cast Harry, and Filch fell limp on the floor.

"…do not."

The stiff Filch on the floor somehow managed to shoot her a _glare_ that clearly said: 'As soon as I snap out of it, you'll _wish_ it was detention I gave you'.

"Rat us out, would you, Mr Filch?" said Hermione in a falsely sweet voice, bending closer to Filch's face. "I don't think so. We have our reasons for doing what we're doing, and it would be such a bother to have our time restricted like that. You see, Mr Filch… I'm not an idiot. Why would a wizard whose job would normally involve a lot of Scourging Charm always be without his wand?"

Harry and Ron looked at each other in confusion — they'd never thought of that.

"The answer, obviously, is that you're no wizard at all, Mr Filch, hm?" continued Hermione. "You're a muggle — or, rather, a squib. You're ashamed of it, too, obviously, or else we'd have heard students calling you names like that long ago. It's your little secret. Just like sneaking out in this corridor is ours. You see what I mean… keep our secret, and we'll keep yours. But else…"

Satisfied with her little speech, Hermione then walked away from Filch. Harry and Ron exchanged looks of impressed terror. Nothing needed to be said. Deep down, they'd always known Hermione could be _really_ scary if she tried.

* * *

Instead of the Cerberus, who had been named Fluffy as Hagrid had told them the other day, there now was a large cauldron, and next to it a small table covered by a neat collection of ingredients. The trapdoor was sealed by a silvery wax-like substance, on which were engraved those words:

" _From Queen Apis to Bane of Œdipes"_

 _"_ Ugh!" said Ron, disappointed the first new challenge wasn't of a flashier sort. "What're those names? Do you reckon they're spells?"

"Of course not, Ron," said Hermione. "Those are mythological names, don't you see? Œdipes was a Greek hero who defeated a Sphinx, and Apis is… wait, Apis is Greek for Bee. That seal is made of Queenstinger Wax, of course, that's it!"

"Queenwasp Wax, uh?" said Harry. "I can't say I've heard of that."

"Of course you haven't, it's in the Potions textbook," answered Hermione. "Which you _never_ read. Not that I blame you that much, what with Snape being Snape."

"Glad you understand," answered Harry. "But then… what is Queen-whatever Wax?"

Hermione, who was burning to begin her impromptu lecture, didn't have to be asked twice:

"Queenstinger Wax is a special type of wax created by Queenstingers, a breed of bees created and kept by only one wizard in the world, called Barry Winkle. Queenstinger Wax is extremely resilient, and it will explode like Erumpent fluid if one tries to smash it."

"Well that's nice," snarked Ron.

"If you want to get rid of a Queenstinger seal, you have to melt it using a special potion that takes an hour to brew, Winkle Draught. Barry Winkle invented it too."

"Yeah, I would have guessed," said Harry. "So, if I understand right, we're supposed to brew this Draught if we want to get past that seal?"

"That certainly seems to be the idea," answered Hermione.

"Well, let's get to it, shall we?" said Harry with a certain apprehension.

"You mean actually brewing the potion?" chuckled Hermione. "I _could_ do that if it got to that, but it would be so much _work_ … not to mention the waste of time. No, I have another idea… { _a much better idea_ }!"

* * *

{ _I hope I performed satisfactorily_ }, said the Basilisk as the last droplets of molten silver wax dissolved with green fumes from the edge of the trapdoor.

{ _You see, Harry?_ } Hermione hissed smugly. { _Another tidbit one can learn in Potion Text Books: Basilisk's Venom is highly corrosive, and it will dissolve almost **anything**._}

{ _Scary stuff!_ } said Ron. Nobody disagreed.

{ _Oh, Great Basilisk —_ } said Hermione almost as an afterthought. { _If I'm not too far off with the riddle, I believe there is a living creature in the next room. If you do not mind, I and my human friends will pass first while you wait here._ }

{ _As you wish, Hermione Granger_ } said the Basilisk with a bow.

The three magic students climbed down the stone stairs thad had been added to the trapdoor over the holidays. The room below was decorated like an Egyptian tomb, and Hermione had to stop herself from examining the hieroglyphs too closely when she realized the imposing statue in the middle of the room was no statue at all, but a flesh-and-blood Sphinx. Hermione did expect _something_ to do with the myth of Œdipes, but a truly living Sphinx was more than she'd hoped for.

The creature had the body of an over-large lion: great clawed paws and a long yellowish tail ending in a brown tuft. Its head, however, was that of a woman, although wish sharper features than most women Hermione knew. She turned her long, almond-shaped eyes upon Hermione as she approached; in return, Hermione bowed curtly.

"Greetings, Sphinx. I am humble Hermione Granger. I take it that you are the guardian of this Chamber?"

"You are correct, young witch," spoke the Sphinx in a deep, full voice, bearing sharp teeth, "though that was, in truth, an easy thing to guess. I am Pili Psusennes, formerly of the Nassor Clan. For the great Dumbledore's sake, I stand guard before this corridor. I do not wish you ill, but it is my sacred purpose to maul you most savagely if you do not solve the riddle _satisfactorily_."

Ron had taken a few careful steps backwards. The Sphinx had seen him, and said:

"Your friend is not wrong, mistress Granger. You may yet turn back; my heart is not without mercy. I will now speak my riddle, and again you will have the chance to turn away. Heed."

Straightening her pose even more, Pili Psusennes, enraptured as if in prayer, recited the ancient riddle of the Sphinxes:

"Which creatures walk on four legs in the morn,

And yet on two legs tread through the afternoon,

And on three legs must greet the setting sun?"

"Wait!" blurted Harry. "I know that one! It's…"

"Shhhhh!" shushed Hermione. "It _can't_ be _that_. There must be a trick, a catch, somehow."

She looked to the female Sphinx's face for a sign of whether she was headed in the right direction, but Pili's face had the stillness of stone. Hermione was rather reminded of Goldie the Griffin, in fact. Now to think — she wasn't about to anger the first member of a non-human sapient species she met…

Wait.

"The goblin."

Harry and Ron looked at Hermione, then at each other, and seemed about to make a break for it back up the stairs, but they vanished as soon as they tried to set foot on the first marble step.

" _Explain_." said Pili Psusennes icily, baring her fangs.

Wavering slightly, Hermione found the strength to elaborate on her reasoning:

"Well, in this day and age, you see, humans rarely use canes — some do, of course, but it's no longer a go-to for the elderly, not to mention wizards and their healing charms ; so there goes the ancient answer of 'man'. Now of course, it could be a lot of other sapient bipeds, but elves, as I have learned, have a stigma against caring for the elderly — bloody injustice, that; leprechauns, trolls and giants aren't the type to fashion luxury items like canes, banshees glide rather than walk and so they never truly walked on any number of legs at all in the first place… all of this in contrast with goblins, who, ever since King Erkardt II introduced the practice in 1256, have a tradition of gifting intricately-carved staves to the patriarchs of their families. These staves are reputed to hold magical powers, although the Goblin Nation firmly denies-"

"Thank you, mistress Granger, that will be quite enough," said the Sphinx, cutting her off.

"Eep. Sorry. I babbled," she apologized. "Uhm. Was that the right answer?"

"No," came the sharp answer.

"Er…" said Hermione apprehensively. "I… find that rather hard to believe. Since, hem, you're, well, you're not horribly goring me right now as we speak. Uhm."

"Mistress Granger," said the Sphinx, finally allowing her red lips to curve into a smile, "your answer was not _right_. However, it was certainly _satisfactory_."

Cheering went off inside Hermione's head — and outside, as well, from Harry and Ron.

"You may pass." said Pili, stepping aside as the golden door to the next room opened all on its own at the guardian's silent command.

Hermione was about to walk forward, but then shot a nervous glance at her two friends.

"Do not worry," Pili said in answer to her unspoken query. "The right to pass extends to the minions of the one who has beaten a Riddle."

"Oh. Thank you!" said Harry as he followed Hermione into the next room with Ron. "By the way, what was the _right_ answer?"

"Now, young wizard, where would be the fun if I told you?"

* * *

A moment after Hermione and her two friends entered the next chamber, which was plunged in darkness, they heard a panicked, metallic scream:

"AAAAAAAACK! YOU! NO! No, no, no, no, NO!"

"Ahem… Hello?" called Ron nervously.

"No! I'm not listening, you, you POKERS!" answered the voice. "After a thousand years — a _thousand years_ of loyal service to the Headmasters, _you_ come along, and make me _demand_ to be relocated to this new post!—And now even in the recesses of the most forbidden room of the entire confounded _CASTLE_ —NO! I'm out!"

There was an odd metallic sound as the Golden Griffin they had met outside the Headmaster's Office the previous year soared through the air above them on its metallic wings, flying back out of the room and presumably out of the Third Floor Corridor altogether.

"That was easy," said Hermione, pleasantly surprised.

"That's what _you_ think," Ron remarked. "Golden-beak might be gone, but we're still stuck in absolute darkness."

"Oh, honestly, are you a wizard or not?" said Hermione before waving her wand. " _Lumos!_ "

The tip of said wand absolutely failed to light up in a ball of mystic light.

"Uh." She tried again. " _Lumos Maxima!_ "

Nothing again.

"Do you want _me_ to try?" offered Harry.

"Bah! Don't bother," said Hermione. "I could have failed _once_ , but two's a pattern, as my father likes to say. Well, of course, it wouldn't be _this_ easy… there must be some sort of powerful darkness enchantment here that trumps anything a student could throw at it."

"So what, we just stumble our way through the room?"

"What else _can_ we do?"

A few falls later (there were _trip wires_ on the ground — who'd designed this chamber, the Weasley Twins?!), they reached the next door. They found it open (presumably, Goldie's resignation had counted as 'defeating' the room's challenge). However, they couldn't make out anything on the other side for it — not that the next room was _dark_ , exactly; they just couldn't make out anything in it. Some mind-confusing enchantment was preventing them from processing the signals that their eyeballs received.

"Right," said Harry in a most Gryffindorly manner. "I'll go first."

The black-haired boy took a tentative step inside and quickly darted back out.

"HERMIONE! RON!" he yelled, panicked. "He's free! Voldemort! He's got his own body and everything now, he's in the room, he wants to kill you! We've got to do something!"

Hermione, keeping a cool head, peeked into the room without fully crossing over.

"Well, I can see a snake," she said.

"Yeah, a snake, that's what he is. A bloody Slytherin," acquiesced Ron.

"No, no, I mean, literally, it's just a snake. No Tom Riddle in sight. Look, I'll see what he's up to. { _Snake? Excuse me bothering you, but what are you doing here?_ }"

She stepped back, a haunted look in her eyes.

"It… it made a hiss," she said.

"Erm, isn't that what snakes do? Usually?" Ron asked.

"No, no, you don't understand," repeated Hermione, sound more and more panicked, "it _made a hiss_. It spoke Parseltongue and _I couldn't understand!_ I've… I've _lost_ the _gift!_ "

"Hermione, it's Riddle!" insisted Harry. " _He_ 's in there, and he's messing with your mind! There's no way… { _look, you understand this, right?_ }"

The girl finally allowed herself to breathe.

"Oh. Yes, I do. Thank you." She continued: "But wait, why would Tom Riddle even _do_ such a thing? It doesn't make sense. Ron, have a look inside."

Ron did so, and, just like Harry, instantly recoiled.

"It's a sp-sp-s-s-spid-spiderrrr!" stuttered the terrified boy. "G-giant! Spid-der!"

"Right, now that's ridiculous," ruled Hermione. "A snake sort of made sense, but Riddle wouldn't just randomly turn into a spider. Let me check again."

She did.

"Yep," she announced, "still the mute snake. I think this is some sort of shapeshifter that takes a different form for everyone."

"Then what would it look like in front of several people?" wondered Ron.

"Let's find out!" said Hermione with a smile, dragging the two boys with her into the room.

The figure in the middle of it swirled like billowing smoke for a moment before condensing into the form of Lord Voldemort — tall, red-eyed, noseless, his fiendish face stretched by a crooked smile. He cackled. Harry and Ron readied their wands.

"I knew it! It _is_ Voldemort!" said Harry.

"We'll see about that," said Hermione before casting all spells she could think of at the Dark Wizard: " _Petrificus Totalus!_ _Expelliarmus!_ _Diffindo!_ "

Each spell splattered onto the supposed Voldemort's chest despite the tall wizard's weak attempts to dodge. However, Hermione watched in awe as the light of the curses were _absorbed_ into the body of the creature, who didn't look any worse for wear. After another cackle, Voldemort turned his wand back on them and yelled:

" _Diffindo!_ "

The bolt of light green energy missed Hermione's neck by a few centimeters. She cast another Disarming Charm at Voldemort, focusing as much as she could on his black wand. The spell hit its mark but the wand simply gurgled it up like a siphon.

"Now that's just _ridiculous_ ," muttered Hermione while dodging a _Petrificus Totalus_. "Now look here, you!" she then said. "What do you want?"

Voldemort cackled and fired a Disarming Charm at Ron, whose wand flew out of his hand and into the Dark Lord's.

"Can you actually _talk_?" she taunted. If Voldemort truly was the arrogant Slytherin that the Basilisk had described, Hermione thought that surely he'd be gloating by now, going on and on about how powerful he was and the foolishness of fighting him.

"Haaaahahahah!" said Voldemort just then. "It is pointless to resist, stupid Gryffindors! I am all-powerful, don't you see?… You are fools if you think you can fight me! Aaaaahahahahahah!"

Hermione twitched, blinked, and then yelled:

"Of course! Harry! Ron! This thing, it's a shapeshifter, not a _person_ — it turns into whatever you fear the most, and of course it must have decided Riddle was the most likely things to scare all three of us — but — just — it reacts to _expectations_! Quick! Expect him to trip!"

All three children stared hard at the aghast fake Voldemort, imagining him tripping and falling with every fiber of their being. He swaggered.

 _You're going to lose_ , thought Hermione as strongly as she could. _You're going to lose. You're going to stop acting like Voldemort and you're just going to curl up in a ball in a corner. That is what you are going to do. Just step aside, crouch down and ignore us. You're going to lose._

The shapeshifter, its borrowed face now blank, walked backwards into a corner, sat down, circled its knees with its thin bony arms, and closed its eyes.

"Hooray!" yelled Ron, and nobody could fault him.

* * *

Ron insisted to be the first one to enter the next room, to which the door was not locked. He darted back out in a manner surprisingly reminiscent of Harry's when he'd first seen the fake Voldemort.

"Bloody hell, another one?!" he complained.

"Another what?" asked Hermione.

"Shapeshifter-thing," said Ron.

"Uh? That's… unlikely," she said. "I'll take a look."

She did.

"No, no, just as I thought," she concluded. "It's a _real_ giant spider this time."

That failed to calm Ron down in any way. She strutted into the room. It was indeed a fairly large spider — that was to say it was about the size of a teacher's desk. Still, nothing to worry about. All the other trial were _solvable_ , if difficult; it stood to reason this one would be as well.

Between portraits, diaries, ugly golden griffins and turbans, one never knew what could talk in the wizarding world, so Hermione said 'Hello' to be safe.

The spider answered in a deep and raspy voice:

"Hello, prey."

This was not reassuring.

"We'd like to pass, please."

"Oh, I think not," answered the spider while clicking its rather large pincers together. "I am to eat whoever attempts to pass."

"OH GOD PLEASE DON'T EAT US!" Ron blurted out.

"As much as I would wish to do that, prey," explained the spider, "I must by contract inform you that I cannot harm you if you choose to turn back."

"Ah." said Hermione diplomatically. "You do realize you're a glorified scarecrow, though?"

"What?" said Ron and the spider at the same time.

"You can't _really_ eat anybody," Hermione said.

"Lies!" protested the spider. "I can and will if you choose to march forward."

"You can't _really_ do that, though," she explained. "Wizard authorities aren't very compassionate for other sapient beings, and if any student attending Hogwarts was _eaten_ by a _giant spider_ , not only would the school probably be closed down for a while, but you can bet the giant spider would be put down instantly."

The giant spider's pincers clashed against one another violently, the very picture of shock.

"You are right… prey," it said. "You are right. I… _thank_ … you."

"Ah. Good." said Hermione. "Honestly, why would you even accept to come here in the castle? From your standpoint, that was a death trap if ever I saw one."

" _I had my reasons_ ," said the spider threateningly.

"Fine, fine," Hermione dismissed him. "Well, we'll just pass through then."

"But… you may not! You _cannot_!" objected the spider.

"As I just explained to you very clearly," repeated Hermione, "you can't do anything to us without dooming yourself."

"But… but…" stammered the hairy arachnid.

"Hush," huffed Harry as he passed the spider, following Hermione's footsteps.

"But what ever will I do next time someone comes here?!…" wailed the spider.

"Oh, don't worry about that," said Hermione, "very few wizards have an ounce of logic in them. I'm very much a special case, without false modesty."

"Hey!"

"Yes, Harry, you too."

Hermione then opened the door, and found the next room completely empty.

"Uhm… Mr Spider?" she asked. "Is that _normal_?"

"The pixies in this room… were delicious," said the spider, clicking its pincers in a way very reminiscent of someone licking their chops.

Ron shuddered.

* * *

After that, it was a simple matter of putting the Diary in one of the frozen Quirrell's pockets and walking back out of the corridor. Hermione was a bit ashamed when she realized the Basilisk had had to wait for them, standing still, for all the time it had taken them, since she had last 'ordered' it to 'wait here' and Riddle's order still forbid the poor serpent from taking initiatives on her own. Nonetheless, all in all, Hermione, Harry and Ron all agreed that this little escapade had been a lot of fun (and good spell-casting practice, Hermione added).


	9. War of the Spiders

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _So… this chapter! Boy, this chapter. It took a little longer than usual, and that is because, being a more active, 'dramatic' chapter, it was a bit out of my writing comfort zone. But it's good to challenge oneself once in a while! I hope I did my vision of dragon-riding spiders justice, and that you won't resent me too much for any death or maiming that might happen in this chapter. Don't worry, Chapter IX, which is already half-written, will be a return to form with the more comedic tone I have gotten you used to! In the meantime, enjoy…_

 **Chapter VIII:** _ **War of the Spiders**_

Monday and Tuesday were very normal school-days, the highlight being that Professor Lockhart had again made a complete fool of himself. Hermione had begun silently plotting a way to get him sacked as soon as possible. To do so, she was methodically studying every word the blond idiot said and scrutinizing every page he'd written. She was looking for a weak point in what was obviously a web of carefully-crafted lies; Lockhart, being Lockhart, interpreted this diligence as newfound admiration for him, and granted ten points to Gryffindor (Hermione wasn't complaining, although the Slytherins were).

On Wednesday, early in the afternoon, Harry, Hermione and Ron were quietly sitting in Transfiguration Class trying to turn beetles into buttons when Professor McGonagall was called away by Professor Dumbledore. She left them instructions to keep working on their buttons while she was gone.

{ _Basilisk,_ } Hermione hissed to the wall next to her, { _do you have any idea what is happening?_ }

{ _No, Hermione Granger_ ,} answered the serpent. { _I could try to find out, but as I am a very conspicuous giant snake, I believe you may be better suited for this task._ }

{ _She has a point!_ } quipped Ron in almost perfect Parseltongue.

{ _Right,_ } said Hermione. { _I will try to finish my button quickly and then I shall go see what is what. After all, the Professor didn't say anything about what we were to do once we were done with the works, did she?_ }

{ _Your mind may well be a match for my Old Master's…_ }, 'chuckled' the Basilisk.

* * *

It took but two more tries for Hermione to be the first in the class to finish her buttons. Harry and Ron objected to her sneaking off alone, but she answered pointedly that if they wanted to come along, they'd just have to do good work too. It's not like she had cheated.

The girl bumped into the silver monkey on the way, but a quick Body-Bind Curse (that spell was quickly becoming her signature curse, wasn't it?) brought him down before he could trouble her too much, and she unceremoniously kicked the petrified statue ( _there_ was an odd sentence) into an abandoned classroom. Lamenting that she hadn't thought to borrow Harry's Invisibility Cloak, she carefully made her way to the courtyard, where the excitement seemed to be coming from. There, she was treated to a rather fantastical spectacle.

Organized in a sort of defensive formation were at least sixty strange creatures, with human torsos and the bodies of horses. Centaurs. _Hogwarts: A History_ did say there was a "herd" of centaurs in the Forbidden Forest, but she had no idea they occasionally visited the school itself. Stranger still, this clearly wasn't just a delegation, but a sizable portion of (if not the whole) Centaur Herd; while the outer rim of the circle was composed of armed warriors, woman-like centaurides and numerous very cute child-foals were standing towards the center of the group, tightly holding each other and looking warily at the humans.

At the front of the Centaurs was a large male Centaur with wild black hair and a beard, staring with black eyes into the pale twinkling ones of Professor Dumbledore, who, surrounded by the Hogwarts Heads of House and Hagrid, appeared to be in great talks with him.

"Senator Bane," Dumbledore was saying, with an obvious effort to appear friendly, "I cannot say it displeases me to see you and your people gracing these hallowed walls with your presence, but I did not expect such a visit from your people today, and certainly not in such great numbers… I very much regret, but we have not prepared any accommodations for your kind…"

"It matters not, wizard," Bane said icily. "We have come against our better judgement to seek the asylum we were promised by your Lady Hufflepuff many years past."

"Asylum?" repeated Professor Sprout, walking forward. "Senator, Hogwarts never would turn away peoples in need… but what could worry you to this extent? Why even at the height of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's power, you didn't…"

"This is not about the petty squabbles within your own people, witch," answered Bane. "I speak of our war with the Invaders. Close the gates, men, or regret it!"

"Invader's?" Hagrid perked up before anyone could silence him. "Ain't nobody new in the for'st I know of, sirs, 'ahm careful like that."

"You dare deny, son of giants?" said Bane ruefully. "You dare, when you brought the Invaders yourself upon our hunting grounds, when you pamper them and hide them and protect them from us?"

Hagrid's face, far easier to read than usual without his beard in the way, underwent a sudden change.

"O'blimey. This's about Aragog's li'l tykes, ain't it?" he said.

"Aragog?" asked Dumbledore, confused. "Was he not your Acromantula friend, Rubeus?"

"Aye, 'fessor Dumbledore, sir. The very same. One o'mah best friends, he is, he's been livin'in the Forest for fifty years, too, never cause no trouble he didn't…"

"ACROMANTULA?" yelped Flitwick. "You, Hagrid,… an Acromantula, in the Forest?! What were you _thinking!_ "

"But… but…" said Hagrid, tearing up a bit. "…I thought it'as alrigh', I mean nobody ever complained, and where'd he'ave gone, Aragog, uh? I loved that kid I did, and all because You-Know-Who hated mah guts 'cause of who my ma was I'd'a had to give'im up?… He means well, Professor Dumbledore, he really does…"

"The Blind King may mean well," said Bane, "but the same cannot be said of his people, who have killed many of our own kin for the past few years. Now enough talk, wizards, close the gates!"

"But… why, senator?" asked Professor Flitwick, taking a step forward.

"Because the enemy are giving chase!" pressed a Centaur warrior from the back of the group.

" _Are_ , you say?" Flitwick said, his Ravenclaw wits finally putting the pieces together. "Are you telling us there is an entire party of Acromantulas emerging from the Dark Forest after you!?"

"Yes, and now for goodness' sake, the gate-"

"But Senator Bane, I don't understand," said Professor Dumbledore. "Even if they are so hostile, surely you trust the combined strength of your warriors and our warlocks to fend off a few oversized arachnids?"

"It's not the spiders, fer Pan's sake!…" said another Centaur. "It's…"

At this moment, a dragon appeared.

Hermione could not repress a squeak of surprise (and fear), but it was drowned out in the commotion that ensued.

The Dragon was _colossal_ , covered in large glistening brown scales, with huge leathery wings and four clawed legs snatching and slashing at the Centaurs as it swooped down into Hogwarts' open courtyard. Hermione's academic side identified it as a Norwegian Ridgeback without too much trouble, but that was hardly the most remarkable thing about it.

No, what was most strange and terrifying about this dragon was that the characteristic ridges on its back had been used as the frame for a strange canvas of silvery webbing that curved and coiled into a saddle, to which a writhing black mass was fastened. It took Hermione a moment to recognize the black thing for what it was — an Acromantula of average size and build, riding the dragon into battle with a fierce cry and frenetic clicking of its pincers.

The giant spider's kin were not far behind, attacking in a crowd of fanged death into the courtyard.

" _Protego Horribilis!" "Protego!" "Protetor Maxima!_ " came the Professors' first protective spells against the wall of spidery invaders.

At the same time, the Centaurs shifted positions like the trained army they were — the warriors all shifted to the front, training bows and spears against the attacking arachnids, while the centaurides and foals were ushered away into the walls of Hogwarts.

Hagrid, whom the spiders were staying away from, was rushing _towards_ the inflow of monsters, apparently trying to tell them off like a group of misbehaving kids.

Using some spell Hermione didn't know, Professor McGonagall conjured a silvery cat and ordered it to go warn the other professors of the danger.

Hermione herself, regretting again that she didn't have the Invisibility Cloak, made a split-second decision that this was just about the right time for a certain giant snake to be of use to the school.

Running back inside, she screamed alarm at the Portraits, telling them to pass the message along. She passed the silver monkey that was groggily waking up — no time for him right now — and was beginning to climb the stairs to the Second Floor when she heard footsteps behind her.

Very much inhuman footsteps. The footsteps of something that had eight legs.

She looked behind her and saw no less than three Acromantulas, about as large as a small bed, running after her. Flitwick was on their toes but while his spell-work was admirable, his tiny legs did not allow him to keep up with the attackers.

Fear coursing through her veins, she tried to even faster up the stairs, forgot the ever-oily thirty-third step (the unscrubbable relic of a decades-old prank), and stumbled down into the gaping pincers of the fastest Acromantula, who squealed in delight and sunk one of its fangs into her thigh. She screamed in pain and jerked away from the murderous spider, rolling to her side, bleeding.

Before he could strike again, her attacker found itself transfigured into a still vaguely spider-shaped cushion, and she saw a victorious McGonagall out the corner of her eyes.

"Miss Granger!" panted the Transfiguration Professor while trying to fend off the second Acromantula (the third had apparently already been disposed of). "Are you alright?"

"No, agnh, he bit me, the bastard—" Hermione didn't usually use swearwords, but she felt people who tried to _bite her bloody leg off_ were a reasonable exception "— but I can manage, don't worry about me… hh… you're needed here,… I'll manage, get help upstairs…"

Professor McGonagall seemed torn to leave her prized pupil (Parselmouth or not) in such a situation, but an instant later she nodded and turned into a cat before scampering back into the courtyard-turned-battlefield. The last Acromantula in the corridor had been blasted into the wall and knocked out while Hermione was talking.

The girl wasted no time and, leaning heavily on the banister and ignoring the concerned queries of the Portraits, she limped her way to the Second Floor Girls' Bathroom, ducking inside just in time before a group of panicked student passed through the corridor. She opened the pathway into the Chamber and weakly let herself slide down the pipe. Before opening the door, she hissed an explanation:

{ _Great Basilisk, the school, under attack, the Acromantulas, you must, help, more important, than, the secret, they… have… a… dragon…_ }

{ _I will come at once._ } said the Basilisk. { _Are you alright, Hermione Granger?_ }

{ _No… an Acromantula… bit… me… I'll manage…_ } she answered weakly while stepping aside to allow the Basilisk to ascend through the pipe and into the open. { _Find… Harry… tell him… to explain… how you… friendly… Go!…_ }

In truth, she wasn't that sure that she _would_ manage. She'd stopped the bleeding with some clever Transfiguration of parts of her robes into bandages, but the pain in and around the bite had been spreading, as had a certain feeling of _numbness_ , and Hermione was increasingly worried about _venom_. Acromantulas had _venom_ , hadn't they?…

"{ _Oh_ }, ehhh…" her vision blurred, " _help…_ "

She slumped against the wall just outside the bathroom as the world went black.

* * *

" _Hermione? Hermione?_ "

A boy's voice. English or Parseltongue, she couldn't tell. It was definitely her name, though.

Pain.

The sheets were soft.

Pain. In her leg, and everywhere.

"…uh…" she groaned.

"Hermione! You're alright!"

That was definitely English, and it was most definitely Ron's voice.

"Hermione! Can you hear us?"

English again, and _that_ was Harry.

"…ahhhh…" She'd meant to say something, but her lips and tongue were numb.

"Don't press her, it's been a harrowing experience, poor dear…"

That was a warm, matronly voice.

Wait, pain, the venom, sheet, matron? She must be in the Hospital Wing.

Venom. The spiders. The battle-!

"…shpydrs…"

"Spiders! She said spiders, Madam Pomfrey, she really is awake!" said Harry.

"Miss Granger, can you hear me?" asked the voice inquisitively.

"…yesshhhh…" she slurred.

"Good, good", she said, waving her wand above her leg. "How are you feeling?"

"…terrible…" croaked Hermione. "…battle…?"

"Oh right! The battle!" Ron said. "Yeah, you would still be right in the middle of it, wouldn't you? It's been three days…! We were worried sick about you!"

" _…_ _thsssat's ncie…_ " she answered in some weird mix of English and Parseltongue before shaking her head. "Uh. That… came out… wrong…?… That's… nice of you, Ron, and Harry, it's very… but how did it go?… the battle?"

"We won." said Harry succinctly.

"Oh… good… { _Basilisk?…_ }"

"She's alright." said Harry. "Turns out, Professor Dumbledore speaks a bit of Parseltongue. His accent's terrible though. Anyway, just threatening to open her eyes sent half the spiders back where they came from once Dumbledore translated it to English… and oh, you should've seen her fight with that dragon — she spit venom on the saddle and it melted and the spider fell off and a monkey came out of nowhere and climbed onto its back and…"

"…yes, yes… details alter… oh… anyone… dead?…"

"Several centaurs and acromantulas…" Harry said darkly. "No students, though, I think, but you're not the only one they bit."

"One of'em cut off Fred's left arm!" Ron said angrily.

"Ow… Will he heal?" Hermione asked with concern, her voice returning more and more with every minute.

"I think so, Miss Granger," said Pomfrey, "but it will take time. You yourself were not wounded too harshly, but you received quite a dose of poison… and you're not healed yet, for that matter. You'll need to stay in bed for several more days at the least. With not too much talking. I…"

Dumbledore materialized out of thin air behind her.

"I'm sorry, Poppy, if I may?"

"What?" asked Poppy and Hermione together, though for very different reasons.

"Can I press you to a cucumber sandwich?" asked the long-bearded sorcerer with a genial smile.

"Eh?"

"I'm sorry, I always did want to say that out loud. Honestly now, however, I wish to talk alone with Miss Granger and her friends. If you would retire momentarily…"

"…Fine," said the frowning nurse, "but don't excite her too much."

"Have I ever let you down?" replied the wizard.

"Do you want the short list, or the l-" she was cut off as Dumbledore gently pushed her out of the room and closed the door behind her.

"Now." he said. "Setting aside the matter of your letting an XXXXX-class beast loose inside a school, recklessly endangering yourself by eavesdropping on a private conversation during class hours, and repeatedly breaching my über-forbidden Corridor…" Dumbledore's eyes twinkled in a way that immediately set the three children's minds at ease, "there is a matter I wish to discuss with you. I know that at least two pieces of Tom Riddle are concealed in the Corridor, and I know now that it was your doing with the help of the { _Bazilishk_ }."

"Ah, uhm, yes," she acknowledged.

"For this, I wish to thank you, but also urge you to observe utmost discretion. I will be jumping through quite a few hoops keeping Hogwarts open and the Basilisk out of harm's way after all of this excitement… I hardly need ruckus concerning Riddle, when we know that he is, for the moment, not too much of an issue."

"So wait, the Acromantula in the Corridor, he was a spy, right?" suggested Harry. "Working for Riddle?"

"One would think so," said Dumbledore, "but it would appear that young mister Kerbog was merely mapping out Hogwarts, ready to advise his brothers and sisters when they invaded the halls on where to go to deal the most harm. I have questioned the Acromantulas, and they seem to hate Tom Riddle with a passion. They were unaware of what the Corridor truly held. Mere coincidence."

"Ah, that's good." Hermione said. "Where did the dragon come from, though? And why did the Acromantulas even attack us in the first place?"

"It seems," said Dumbledore gravely, "that Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback was 'accidentally' released into the Forest by none other than your friend and mine, Rubeus Hagrid. A most dreadful miscalculation, and I'm sad to say not the first one he made, though certainly the gravest."

"Oh… is he going to lose his job here?" said Harry, conflicted. These _would_ be grounds for dismissal and Harry would have advocated it in theory, but Hagrid… Hagrid was a _friend_ , and he hated to think of how the poor half-giant would feel at being booted from his beloved Hogwarts.

"No, Mr Potter, don't worry." answered the Headmaster. "I have _arranged_ , using a certain spell I may tell you about later, that this secret stays in safe hands. Rubeus means well, and he deserves a chance. Just as you deserved those answers."

"But why _did_ the Acromantulas attack the castle? You never said!" complained Hermione. Even when half-comatose from a venomous bite, she did _not_ like to be cheated out of an answer.

"Ah yes… why indeed", said Dumbledore mysteriously. "Vengeance? The lust for power? Something like that."

"What w-will… happen… to the spiders,… now?" she asked.

"My efforts were efficacious enough," said Dumbledore with a smile, "that Minister Fudge let me handle it personally. The Queen of the Acromantulas, Mosag, was behind the attack; I have taken her in custody and left the King, Aragog, with express orders to maintain better control of his descendance in the future."

"…and the Centaurs?…"

"They have suffered terrible losses," said Dumbledore, "but I hope that they shall not forget how instrumental we wizards were in the victory that saved them. In either case, for the time being, they feel it is not safe to go back into the Forest so soon — not to mention they must pay respects to their dead. Centaur tradition is to honor fallen warriors on their last battlefield… Hogwarts, in this case."

"And the dragon? What happened to the dragon?" Harry asked.

"I'm afraid the Norwegian Ridgeback had to be killed by the Basilisk during the battle. Hagrid held a small funeral for him… or her, rather, as it turned out."

"Oh, and what about Kaiser?" Harry continued. "Will he be alright?" with concern.

{ _Kaiser?_ } Hermione questioned, half-unthinkingly slipping into Parseltongue as was common for Parselmouths discussing snakes.

{ _He decided to follow me when I brought the Basilisk out,_ } Harry explained. { _Then a Centaur stepped on him._ }

{ _Dan't vorry, he shallsh be alriglsh_ ,} hissed Dumbledore to the laughter of everyone in the room. "…What is it?" he asked, confused;

"Your accent, Professor!" chortled Ron. "No offense, sir, but it's ridiculous… _I_ speak better Parseltongue than that!"

Dumbledore blushed, huffed and changed the subject.

"Oh," he said, "and Mister Potter… Harry… I hear that your owl Hedwig is also recovering."

"Recovering?" said the black-haired boy, surprised. "She was injured too?"

"Why yes," the silver-bearded sorcerer explained. "Do not underestimate the power of love and friendship; even Hedwig the Owl flew to your rescue when she spotted you rushing into the battle. I am told sustained injury to her left wing after she nearly pecked out the dragon's right eye!"

"That's… one… clever… bird…" noted Hermione.

"I know, isn't she?" Harry said proudly. « I swear, if she could only talk, I'd think she was sapient as you or Kaiser!"

"Hem hem," hummed Dumbledore, quickly getting everyone's attention.

"What?" said Hermione, suddenly filled with overwhelming dread that had nothing to do with the acromantula venom.

"Don't underestimate the power of post owls," Dumbledore said simply.

"No. No no nonono…" muttered Hermione, sinking into her pillow.

"Magical owls," the Headmaster explained, "are noted to be far more intelligent than the barn-dwelling creatures known to muggles — and it has been put forward by many a theorist that particularly bright individuals might rival-"

"No no no nononononono…!"

"What _is_ it, Miss Granger?"

"WHY… DO WIZARDS… NOT… CARE… THAT HALF OF THEIR… PETS… ARE… _SAPIENT_?!"


	10. Boggarts and Ilpoats

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Yes, we're back! Some time ago, someone on reddit complained on the lack of original Defence Professors in fanfiction, and if this story can have dragon-riding spiders, then Merlin's beard, there's no reason it wouldn't have an original Defence Professor. On a more general note, thanks to all of you who reviewed with such nice and positive comment; it really is appreciated!_

 **Chapter IX: Boggarts and Ilpoats**

Madam Pomfrey's diligent care worked its wonders and a week later Hermione, along with most of the poisoned students and both Kaiser and Hedwig, was back to full health. Even Fred was mostly alright, although his newly-regrown left arm would need a bit of exercise to grow back some muscle beyond the bare minimum. The first few days of class were hectic as Hermione rushed to catch up with everything she'd missed. Then routine settled back upon Hogwarts.

Some things had changed, of course. There were centaurs walking gravely down the corridors and bringing flowers to certain spots were their kin had died, and the Astronomy Tower was out of bounds as it had been damaged in the Dragon and Basilisk's battle. On a happier note, once they'd accepted the idea of a _friendly_ Basilisk living under their school, everybody had wanted to see it. Entire queues lined up after class and on the weekends in front of the Second Floor Girls' Bathrooms. The crowd was such that Moaning Myrtle had lost much of her depressive behavior, instead chatting with the students to help while away their time waiting in line.

Hermione, Ron and Harry took turns translating for the Basilisk. This came at a price (if a modest one) for those the three were not inclined to help for their own sake. Filch had normally banned such transactions, but even without Hermione's blackmail, such petty rule-breaking was the last of his worries, between the damage dealt by the spiders and dragon and the Centaurs who had taken up residence inside the castle.

Lockhart had fled the grounds on the day of the spiders' attack. (Well, he _said_ in his parting letter that he had been drafted in on an unexpected yeti-hunt in Tibet, but it was clear to everyone with half a brain that he'd just _fled_.) Somewhere on Dumbledore's exceedingly long list of important things to do was finding a replacement Defence Professor, but things like 'Keep Hogwarts open' and 'Prevent a summary execution of the Basilisk by the Ministry' and 'Keep Hagrid out of Azkaban' far outranked it. Therefore, until further notice, Defence Against the Dark Arts would be taught by Professor Max.

Professor Alexander Solomon Max was a bit of an oddball who introduced himself as the Ghoul Studies Professor and an expert on the strange, dark and ghoulish — and indeed he was strange, dark and ghoulish himself. The grimy, warty skin of his face was thankfully covered almost entirely by thick, mossy, dirty brown hair that tinged on greenish, and his bushy eyebrows overlooked beady yellow eyes that gleamed faintly in the dark. Max stood hunched, dressed in a tattered grey suit, and talked in a hoarse, gurgly voice.

Very little was known of Professor Max among the students. After a few hours of digging through the Library, Hermione had uncovered the fifty-year-old memoirs of a former student, which briefly mentioned "old, grimy Professor Max" as having already been a fixture of the school for at least twenty years at the time the author had attended Hogwarts. The man, however old he may or may not be, was essentially a recluse, whom Fred and George revealed they'd only spotted _once_ , on a cold and stormy night, prowling through the hallways, occasionally stopping to hiss angrily at a portrait. In more ways than one, Max, all things considered, was a lot like the ghouls he usually taught about.

As a matter of fact, during the first post-spiders Defence lesson and shortly after Max had introduced himself, Hermione asked:

"Ghoul Studies, sir? We have never taken such a class, nor heard about any of the older students doing so… What is it, exactly?"

Max growled — or purred, it was hard to tell — and rose from his desk.

"Aah…" he gurgled. "Miss Granger… the Parselmouth and hero… yes… good… _very_ good _._ I look forward to teaching you… Parselmouth."

He then clicked his oddly sharp teeth, coughed, and said:

"Very well… does anybody have any… _other_ questions?…"

"Sir!" Hermione insisted.

"Aah… I thought I'd be hearing you again, sometime soon,…" answered Max, rubbing his hands together. "What… is it?"

"You didn't actually answer my question, sir," stated Hermione, who thought Professor Max was rather like a creepier, raspier Garrick Ollivander.

"THERE!" screamed the Professor suddenly. "THERE! _THERE_ 's what I want… to… _see_! People insisting, not taking no for… an! ANSWER! Sheep, useless _sheep_ , the lot of you, who didn't… notice… my… trickery!… Miss Granger, you win GRYFFINDOR a _HUNDRED AND FOUR_ points!… Hahah!"

There were murmurs throughout the class. That man was willing to give Granger over a hundred points for _asking questions_? Gryffindor would win the House Cup for sure this year if he kept this up!

One would think this would have been a sure fact either way, considering Hermione and Harry's brave actions that had saved so many during the War of the Spiders, and indeed Dumbledore had initially awarded Gryffindor two thousand points for that. However, Snape, far from eager to lose the Cup two years in a row, gave his own house two thousand points too, on account that the Basilisk, whose actions could not be ignored, _must_ be considered a Slytherin by virtue of who her breeder, tutor and earliest Master had been. McGonagall, who rather _wanted_ her house to win the House Cup twice in a row for a chance, had objected that by that caretaker-based logic, Aragog and Mosag should be considered Gryffindors. Snape, being Snape, had taken her words to the letter and docked Gryffindor fifty thousand points for the Acromantula's unforgivable actions. Wisely, Professor Flitwick had then decreed that they should cancel all spider-related points before they began to consider the dragon, and to cut a long story short, things were back to the Slytherin-favoring normal.

"Thank you, sir," said Hermione courteously. "Well then, sir… Ghoul Studies?"

"Aah yes, aah yes, you are right… Ghoul Studies," began the Professor. "The study of creepies, crawlies, bugbears, ghouls, gnoles and all miscellaneous magical monsters that go bump in the night… such a beautiful science to make the spleen quiver and the spine tingle!… Headmaster Walter Aragon, a… true enthusiast, like myself, of ghoul studies, introduced the class in eighteen-… in nineteen-… I forget… I was appointed to teach it, and imagine my enthusiasm!… So few people outside of Knockturn truly appreciate the beauty of ugliness, understand…?"

"I think so, Professor," prompted Hermione, "but then why have we never heard of it?"

"…Well, the Ministry, blast them, lobsters the lot of them,… " Max explained, "they sent someone to inspect Hogwarts… just a few days after the first lesson… and shut the class down. Too similar to Defence and Magical Creatures, they _said_ … the FOOLS!…"

So saying, the angered Max had slammed his fist on the desk in the front of the class, which happened to be that of poor, scared Neville Longbottom.

"Only, you see, teaching Ghoul Studies at Hogwarts… it was the dream of a lifetime for me… so I'd gotten Aragon to sign a binding magical contract… saying I'd stay the Ghoul Studies Professor no matter what, for as long as I lived…! Hadn't counted on the _class_ … up… and vanishing… BUT I LIVE! So I stay here. I'll stay. I'll get them… through… sheer… STUBBORNNESS! SOONER or _LATER_ … they'll realize… they can't… get… rid of me! And they'll just _have_ to give me classes to teach again!… They'll _have_ to, you hear me?…"

"Uhm… alright then," hesitated Hermione. Max's behavior had landed him far on top of her list of Incompetent Lunatics Passed Off As Teachers, or ILPOATs, even above Severus Snape and Gilderoy Lockhart. "What about Defence, then?"

"Ah that… yes…" croaked Max, uncertain. "I'm only teaching Defence because that new Headmaster, young Albus _Dumbledore_ … asked me to do that… He's nice, he's NICE, can't say otherwise… but he drives a _hard bargain_ … says I _might_ get a few hours out, at least as an elective, if I do him a few… FAVORS… like that… once in… a while…"

"Right," Hermione said before the terminal Ilpoat could ramble any more. "Well, thank you for all that, but now, if you could actually begin the Defence course?"

"Aaah… yes… now tell me… children… what do you know… of _Dark Magic_?"

* * *

Extremely scary Ilpoat or not, Professor Max was probably the most competent Defence Professor they'd had so far. Once she'd subtly nudged him away from talking _about_ the Unforgivable Curses and instead gotten him to talk about how to _counter_ them, he'd proven to be quite efficient at teaching effective spell-casting — he didn't have Professor Flitwick's finesse, but he had a _sense_ for magic that was quite remarkable. From sight alone, and sometimes even with his back turned, he knew whether a student's Shield Charm was working correctly, and he gave vague advice on 'state of mind' that, while totally lost on Hermione, seemed very efficient for the wizard-born in the class. A cultural thing, she guessed.

* * *

Days passed, filled with lessons, homework, Basilisk-translating and exploring the castle with Harry and Ron (after all, if you were safe from Filch, it would have been stupid not to take advantage of it). Ginny wasn't very comfortable around the Basilisk and had avoided the trio for the most part, preferring to make new friends in her year rather than graft herself onto _their_ group. The Luna girl, on the other hand, followed them around more often than not, blabbering about miscellaneous creatures that Hermione proceeded to cross-reference in the Library. Most of the time she found nothing, but after she'd found that very serious book on Heliopaths, Hermione wasn't taking any chances.

Halloween was drawing near, and Professor Max had promised he would show them something special and season-appropriate on the last lesson before the Feast. Unless the ghastly man had forgotten about the ban on Dark Magic, it was rather clear that he would be bringing in a creature, and all bets were off in the trio's year about who they could be.

"My guess is an Underdark Illithid," Luna had said, but Hermione's research had failed to turn up anything about that particular monster.

"And what do _you_ think, Ron?" Hermione had asked.

"Well…" the wizard-raised boy had said, "a ghoul would be straight-forward for him, too straight-forward. I want to say something like a Dementor or a Banshee, but Professor Dumbledore probably wouldn't allow it, especially not after the whole… 'spider' thing… Ah, hell, I don't know."

"Harry?"

"I don't really know", said the Boy Who Lived. "It's a little hard to imagine what Max thinks would scare us when we see a Basilisk on a daily basis."

* * *

At last, it was The Day — The Day that Professor Max would unleash his 'little surprise' upon a class of Second Years. Neville had organized a petition to have someone like Dumbledore or McGonagall present during this class, but they had failed to make themselves heard.

The first thing everyone noticed when they entered the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom was a large trunk standing in the middle of it. Max was looming behind it, arms crossed.

"Uh." whispered Harry. "What do you make of that, Hermione?"

"Well… it could be a mimic, or some other sort of shapeshifting monster. Or may be the monster's really big and this is one of those trunks that are bigger on the inside. Or maybe…"

" _Aaaa thirteen points_ to _Grrrryffindor!_ " blurted Max, suddenly stepping in-between Harry and Hermione, scaring the spirits out of the nearby Neville. " _That_ is _proper thinking_ in the face of adversity… Miss Granger! That is _brrrrilliant_!… But you're wrong."

"I beg your pardon?" said Hermione at that last bit.

"Right. … _Right._ …" said Professor Max before barking: " _Everybody to your seats! NOW!_ "

Once everyone had complied, the shabby wizard sat on the trunk and began his 'lecture':

"As you can see… this… is… a… _trunk_! A wooden chest! Made of… _wood_! It is absolutely curse-free and unmagical! It is an object! A container! A… BOX!"

A large number of students (those who had high expectations for the surprise creature) groaned at the apparent revelation that Max's 'special monster' was, in fact, a muggle box. Mostly because that meant they'd all lost their bets.

" _But here's the rub…_ " continued the Ilpoat. "What does this box… _contain_? Could be anything. ANYTHING! It could be gold, a Philosopher's Stone, a Greek sorcerer's pet bat, _anything_ , I tell you. It could be a severed head, that's a popular one, seen it a million times."

Neville, Sally-Anne and a few others were looking a bit green.

"Now I want you all… to _think_ … of the most _HORRIBLE_ thing that could be… contained… within this… BOX."

Setting children's imaginative minds to such a task was a recipe for disaster, and nearly everyone was a bit wary after a minute or thinking.

" _Good!_ Now I want each of you to have a look inside… this… _trrrunk!_ Only two rules, _for now_. Rule one! _You_ are _not_ to _tell_ the _class what_ is _in this trunk_! I will personally hex anyone who does that into next _week_! Am… I… clear?!"

Energetic nodding from Neville, followed by the rest.

Hermione had almost begun translating the lecture when she remembered the flip-side of their secret being revealed — the Basilisk spent all her energy answering questions in the evening and weekends, and, forced to nap for most of the day, she could no longer attend classes with her and Harry like before. Oh well.

" _RRRULE TWO!"_ said Max. "If whatever is… inside… looks like it's about to jump out and eat you… close the lid. _Quickly_! All clear?"

Once again, Neville spearheaded an onslaught of terrified head-nodding.

" _GOOOOD!_ Now you! Yes, _you_!" Max called, pulling a girl seated in the second row, Sally-Anne Perks, by the sleeve of her robes. "Come _on_ , girl!"

Sally-Anne was a quiet, pale, blonde-haired girl with a flat nose and brown eyes, who was maybe a bit too tall for her age. Hermione didn't really know her that well, for all that they shared a dorm, but she obviously felt terribly awkward, not to mention naturally a little frightened, being pulled to the front of the class like so.

"Well, _go on now_!" prompted Max. "Open the lid!"

The girl shakily opened the trunk, and immediately squeaked and fell backwards, letting go of the lid.

"SIR! It's a… it-it's a…" stammered the young witch.

"No, no, I _don't_ want to know! _Yet_!" Max cut her off. "To your seat!"

The blonde girl scampered off back to her desk. Professor Max then turned his attention to the boy Dean Thomas. Nearly the same scene as before played out — a frightened peek into the trunk, immediate yelping, and flight back to the safety of his desk. This was repeated again with the Ravenclaws Donald Tricks and Emily Hornby. Max then called all four students back to the front.

"Now _report_ , children!" he growled with a grin. "What you saw in there… was _awful_ … wasn't it?"

A chorus of _Yes_ and _Merlin's beard it was!_ met his question.

"Knew it. I _knew_ it. But what _did_ you see?… Each of you, one by one!"

They did so:

"It was a… a rat with… glowing red eyes, and fangs… and the claws!…"

"A disembodied hand… except it moved! It still moved!"

"One of those awful, _awful_ spiders, sir!"

"A skeleton, it was a skeleton, I swear it was! With purple eyes, and it was _twitching_ , and it…"

" _TO YOUR SEATS!_ " ordered Max. "I've proved my point. You see, class, looks can be deceiving. In this trunk is a shapeshifting ghoulie… known as…"

"A boggart, sir," said Hermione, not without pride. "A shapeshifter that takes the form of one's first fear."

" _Oh, so…_ " rumbled Professor Max with interest. "How… interesting. _Sixty-six points to Gryffindor!_ And however do _you_ know that, Miss… Granger?"

"I realized halfway through your instructions; you see, I encountered a Boggart before, and naturally I sought out information on them afterwards."

" _Ah…_ good." said the Professor. "Well, now that we know _what_ it is, let's teach you how to _defend_ against it, shall we?… It's the name of the course, _isn't_ it. To determine your worst fear, a Boggart will attempt to read… your… mind! I want you to _defend_ yourself against _that_ , first and foremost. Try to prevent it from transforming in the first place. …You! _Longbottom_! I want you to try it!"

"M-me, sir?" stuttered Neville, his face chalk-white.

" _Who else is called Longbottom in this classroom?!_ " thundered Max. "Now off you go!… _Chop-chop_!"

Neville nervously walked to the trunk, and opened it cautiously.

Professor Max leapt out. Of the box, that is.

The two Maxes stared long and hard at each other and burst out laughing, the second Max faithfully imitating the first one.

"Now isn't _that_ …just… the… _bwahahahahah!_ " laughed the two Maxes simultaneously, a scary, manic sort of laugh.

"Sir… why are there… two of you?" asked Harry.

{ _Harry, can't you see? Neville's worst fear is Professor Max!_ } whispered Hermione in Parseltongue.

{ _Uh. Gotta wonder how he outclassed Snape in so short a time,_ } Harry joked back.

" _Right,_ " said Max along with his double, "Longbottom, you failed the test. _Miss Granger!_ Come over here and try _not_ to get mind-read,… will you?"

Hermione, confident she could handle that Boggart as well as that other one, approached fearlessly. Max the Boggart immediately curled into a ball and hid in the corner.

"Uh. It really _was_ the same one."

" _MISS GRANGER!_ I don't know _how_ you did _that_! But that is _six hundred and sixty-six more points_ to _Gryffindor!_ "

The Boggart refused to move for as long as Hermione was nearby (it seems her willpower last time had made quite the lasting impression on the creature), and so Max excused her from the rest of the lesson for the others' benefits. When she came back at the end of the hour, she learned that apparently, the Boggart had been satisfied with how scary Professor Max was to everyone, and no matter what lengths the real Max had gone to, it had absolutely refused to change into anything else. Apparently, the spell to get rid of a Boggart forced it to assume a shape one found funny, but nobody in the room dared to suggest a way to turn their scary, scary teacher into a clown, and Max certainly wasn't the type to do it himself. The real Max was eventually forced to physically wrestle his doppelgänger back into the chest and lock it shut — and even then suspiciously Max-like growling could still be heard coming from inside.

* * *

At the Halloween Feast, no turbaned idiot appeared to yell about a troll, but two different Professors Max showed up at the high table, acting exactly the same way, and it was quite a struggle to figure out which one was the real one — as a matter of fact, it took Albus Dumbledore's Legilimency. Even after being discovered, however, Max the Boggart, who was obviously growing into the role, insisted he stay and enjoy the food.

Hermione, watching the proceedings like everybody else, groaned and added Boggarts to her worryingly long list of Creature Who May Be Sapient But Nobody Cares.


	11. Christmas

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This chapter was surprisingly hard to write. I suppose it mostly has to do with the surprisingly fast-developping amount of plot threads. My sadness at 'Like a Red-Headed Stepchild' going on a possibly-unending hiatus may or may not have had an effect on it, too. Anyway! On with the show! Behold a Christmas that, depending on how you look at it, is either 25 days too early, or 25 years too late!_

 **Chapter X: _Christmas,_** ** _or of Hissing Words and Educating Boggarts_**

" _Sheshhss_. _Shehhhss. Shehhhhs_."

"No, no, no, Luna!" scolded Hermione. "It's _Shehhs-s._ { _School._ } The two last Ss are separate, you see? And watch that middle H, you keep making it longer than it should be. How ridiculous would it be if you said 'Schoooool'?"

" _Sheshhs S_. … _Sheshhs-S,_ " hissed Luna obediently.

It was the Ravenclaw girl's fourth after-class lesson in Parseltongue, two weeks after the Halloween Feast. She had decidedly been making progress, especially once Hermione had mastered and put to good use a few enchantments against eavesdropping. The crowd had gotten a bit distracting. Now the only people who occasionally walked by were Centaurs giving them curious looks, because Hermione's basic charms didn't work on nonhumans, but Centaurs were taciturn, quiet, discrete people.

"Yes, yes, { _good_ }, that's better," complimented Hermione, "but don't overdo it either. The second S isn't louder than the first one, just separate. _Sheshhs-s._ "

{ _School_ }, pronounced Luna.

{ _Yes! That's it!_ } cheered Hermione, "you've done it!"

"Thank you, _Hehhmehnesss Cwenshhehh_ ," said Luna Lovegood, sounding considerably more invested than her usual dreamy self.

"Don't mention it. But come now, I taught you how to hiss Thank you!"

Luna looked ashamed for a moment. "Ahem… _Shkneehhshshethhsss?_ "

"What? What are you — oh. No, no that's another word entirely. You… you just said 'kangaroo'. Listen closely. _Shneeshhcshet_."

" _Sheneeshhcshet_."

"Good! Right, I've got some studying to catch up with and some Basilisk-translating to do. Tomorrow, same time, same place?"

Luna nodded once, sharply, her corkscrew-earrings dangling faintly, and climbed out of the Chamber of Secrets. (One day they'd have to find a more efficient system than these dilapidated, narrow, perpetually slick stairs that led into a broom closet.)

* * *

"Ah, Professor Max," said Hermione, catching him in a corridor. "I've been waiting to speak with you."

"To… _speak_ with me. Yes. Yes?" said the grimy old man, aghast.

"I have this friend who keeps telling me about all sorts of strange creatures, and the Library will only take me so far — I _do_ know it doesn't have the answer to everything, because, for one thing, it didn't mention anything about Acromantulas living in the Forbidden Forest, even though obviously —"

She paused when she realized Max was staring at her, obviously lost in her babble.

"I… I… There is… no corner… in the _room_ …" said Max slowly.

"Oooh," Hermione suddenly realized. "You're the Boggart, aren't you!"

"Yes… I am the… _Boggart,_ " hesitated the man-that-wasn't-a-man. "There is no corner in the room."

"Oh, you're still on about that!" laughed Hermione, which confused the Boggart greatly. With the Riddikulus Curse working the way it did, laughter wasn't particularly associated with good experiences in its memory. "Forget that, that was before you started thinking for yourself, you see — I just needed to get _past_ you at the time — I never meant for you to remember it so much."

"Ah… Yes…" said the Boggart, thoughtfully, and amazed, perhaps, that it could now be _thoughtful_. "Indeed, I do… think for myself… Miss Granger. It is… odd."

"Oh, _you_ are telling _me_!" gushed Hermione. "Do you have any idea how… how _fascinating_ a creature such as you can be?"

"Well, I do now," said the Boggart. "As you have… told me. But… how so?"

"Very little is known about Boggarts like yourself, you see," explained the eager girl. "You seem to gain knowledge from how we _expect_ our worst fear to behave — only, you can take other forms than one's worst fear, right?"

"That is… true…" explained the Boggart. Hermione, for her part, had gotten hold of a quill and parchment and had begun taking notes. "I would see within the mind of the ones I wished to scare… read ahead what they thought I ought to be."

"Without understanding, then?" the Gryffindor girl made sure. "If you were taking the shape of a man, you'd pronounce the sounds you heard in our minds, without understanding what they _meant_ , is that right?"

"Yes…"

"Then what changed?" said Hermione.

"I was… too clever, or clever enough, I suppose…" the Boggart explained, growing ever more confident. "When I was summoned and saw the original of the fear, standing before me… I decided, in my simple mind, to copy that one closely, instead of merely obeying my victim's expectations… to be more realistic, you see… I read the memories and the mind of Max, and I gulped them greedily, absorbed them into my imperfect shape… and now here I am… almost as smart as man, and still learning."

"You can still do Boggart-things, then? Like shapeshifting?" asked the girl.

"I believe so…" said the Boggart doubtfully.

The false wizard raised a hand and twirled it around gingerly. The fingers morphed in wisps of swirling black smoke, and a moment later Hermione was looking at the skeletal, gnarled hand of Tom Riddle.

"Well done!" complimented Hermione. "Well, I'll be seeing you again, but right now, I must go. Classes, you know. History, but still."

"Yes, I will… see you," said the Boggart, waving his shape-shifted hand in good-bye.

* * *

{ _So,_ } Hermione finished translating for the fifth-year Ravenclaw boy, { _he is, in essence, asking whether the Basilisk had any other Masters between Salazar Slytherin and Tom Riddle. What is her answer?_ }

(Addressing the Basilisk in the third person was the most efficient way to work around the loophole in Riddle's command they'd found. It sounded a bit odd, but it was perfectly manageable, and it worked.)

{ _There were others who visited me over the centuries,_ } explained the Basilisk to the eager wizard. { _They called themselves Gaunt. However, none of them freed me from my prison, unfortunately._ }

Just as Hermione had finished translating, the next would-be visitor stepped forward. It was a girl, a first-year Hufflepuff who'd obviously just today worked up the courage to go and look at the giant serpent.

"Can… can I touch it?…" she asked, awed.

"She, please." corrected Hermione. "But yes, I think you can."

The girl tip-toed to the giant snake and stroked her thick glistening green scales with the palm of her tiny hand.

"You're war!" she remarked with surprise.

{ _She is surprised that the Basilisk is warm_ ,} said Hermione 'to no one in particular'.

{ _The human girl may tell her that greater serpents have warm blood_ ,} 'replied' the giant serpent.

Hermione translated to the Oooh-s and Aaah-s of the Ravenclaws in the audience.

God, this was _tedious_. She couldn't wait for her shift to be over, and, in the longer run, for the curiosity about the Basilisk to die down. It had been a month, for goodness' sake! When she, Harry and Ron had offered these services, they'd never expected it would last this long!

* * *

"Can _anyone_ tell me what is _in this box_?"

"Is it a Boggart again?"

"… _Nnno_?"

"Right. Neville, stay away from that one, I'd rather we didn't repeat the test until we have a detailed record of the consequences the first time around."

* * *

It was a fine evening in the Gryffindor Common Room. Hermione had dashed through her homework, put up a 'CLOSED FOR THE WEEK' sign on the Chamber of Secret's entrance, and was now researching ways to communicate with Post Owls, Hedwig looking curiously at her. Harry, sitting in another chair, was chatting with Kaiser in Parseltongue.

Ron was feeling lonely.

He said so.

"You didn't use to last year, though… did you?" argued Harry, a bit concerned.

"Yeah," Ron said sadly, "but… there was the Prank War, and… and Scabbers…"

Hermione smacked herself on the forehead.

"SCABBERS!" she said. "God, I had quite forgotten. You haven't found him yet!"

"Could one really?" said Harry. "He was probably eaten by a cat or something. Or fell down the Moving Staircases. Or was stomped by the Cerberus. Or…"

"Oh _shut up_!" Ron cut him off tearfully. "Just _shut up!_ "

"Sorry…" Harry apologized, sheepish.

"Have you tried putting a notice in the papers?" suggested Hermione. "It did allow my parents to locate a lost cat when I was small… it wouldn't costs us much to try it, not with all we've been earning from those awfully boring translating sessions."

"Boring? Hah! Speak for yourself!" said Ron, cheering up. "It's great practice for me. The Basilisk speaks much louder and clearer than either of you do… no offense. But thanks for the tip, Hermione, I think I'll owl the Daily Prophet or something."

"Maybe you could put a picture of Scabbers with it?" suggested Harry.

"Sorry, I don't have any around," explained Ron. "I can still put in a description, though. Greyish fur, kinda shabby… missing a… a toe on his front paw, too. Bit big for a rat, I suppose. R-Really jumpy around dogs."

Hermione had been scribbling on a piece of parchment as he spoke.

"Right!" she said. "I took all that down, Ron. Hedwig, could you take this to the Daily Prophet? Along with this," she added, handing the owl five sickles to go with the letter.

Hedwig nodded and took flight.

* * *

"Can you turn into something that's not scary to anyone, though?"

"I suppose so," the increasingly-articulate Boggart answered.

His head shifted and swirled and smoked, and one moment later Hermione was looking at a perfect copy of her own face. Still standing on the shoulders of Professor Max's body.

"Ugh… agh…" she spluttered. "That's, uhm, very impressive, but… still kinda creepy…"

"That's good, isn't i-I mean, I apologize," said the Boggart. His face morphed back to that of Professor Max.

"Right. Uhm. Maybe you could try for an original face, then?" suggested Hermione. "Rather than lifting whole-cloth from something you've seen before?"

"Ummm…"

It had been a month, but she still delighted in testing the extent of her Boggart friend's shapeshifting abilities. The Boggart would rather stroll around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, perfecting his impression of Professor Max and enjoying the feeling of being a human, Luna and Ginny tagging along with him and teaching him how to blend in. However, Boggarts had no work to do, nor any need to feed (they seemed to subsist entirely on ambient magic), so that still left him with rather a lot of free time for Hermione to spend drilling him with questions. Questions about all sorts of things — what it was like to be a nonhuman sapient creature, how much he remembered of _before_ he'd gained sapience, what he thought of the wizarding world, etc.

And so it was that the Boggart obediently began shifting his whole body around, still retaining a human shape, but the tattered grey cloak of Alexander Max making way for very neat black robes, his gnarled hands un-wrinkling into youthful, almost feminine shapes, and his face itself undergoing quite a change.

As far as the head went, the end result was something like a cross of Max, Dumbledore and Voldemort, with the bushy brown hair of Hermione herself. It was not bad at all for a first attempt, but… odd, to say the least. Still, she complimented him, and then helped him refine the shape into a working human self that still felt right for the creature.

Hermione mused that it would be rather neat if everyone could shapeshift like Boggarts. Then she could turn into a large, muscular wizard if she needed to fight an Acromantula, or even collapse into a tiny snake to finally speak on level with her scaly friends. Oh well. Being a witch was good enough, she supposed.

* * *

{ _You had seen the □□□□□□?_ }

{ _Luna, tense, please._ } corrected Hermione. { _Between Ron and you… sweet scales, what's so hard about tenses? But more importantly — what did you just say?_ }

{.} repeated Luna Lovegood.

{ _Eh?_ } hissed Hermione, still not understanding. " _SBlgeihhsssss…_ { _what_?}"

"Blatherbleat bleachbirds," said Luna in English. She was speaking in what Hermione called her 'dreamy-but-academic' voice, and that was a sure sign she was on another creature-related crisis. "There was no Parseltongue word for them, so I made one up."

"I'm pretty sure there's no English word for them either," said Hermione, not quite resigned yet to another lecture.

"Well, there is now," answered a beaming Luna, "since me and Father made it up just the other day! He says there ought to be a pack of them floating by Hogwarts this week, I was asking you whether you'd seen them!"

"Um… what does a… that… look like?"

"Glad you asked! They have a corkscrew-shaped blatherbleach that shoots neon-green rays into the sunset, it's quite beautiful I am told, and…"

* * *

And time passed, time spread thing between friends, the Boggart, lessons, the Basilisk, and her research into House-Elves (she was certain there were some in the Castle now, but she somehow couldn't _find_ them, and Filch insisted he had no idea where they could be either).

Christmas Day came.

Hagrid (who had, by now, put his worries about being fired aside) dragged a gigantic Christmas tree into the Great Hall and each Professor did their part in conjuring decorations to cover it with glittering, animate little works of arts. On Christmas Eve all the students, all the portraits, all the ghosts, all the Professors, even a good amount of the Centaurs and the Gargoyles of Hogwarts ('Goldie' at the front) gathered in the Great Hall and had the feast of a lifetime. Time had eased minds, but it was still felt a big jolly celebration was owed to the Hogwarts denizens after the trials they had gone through on Spider Day.

To the amusement of everyone and the surprise of no one but the first years, Professor Dumbledore showed up in full Father Christmas gear, with a host of elves carrying gifts in tow. The little pointy-eared creatures were fluttering around the Hall, bursting with Christmas joy, giving out the presents and asking if everything was to the guests' liking.

One elf with a pointy nose popped in front of Hermione, giving her a bit of a start. He handed their presents to her, Harry, Kaiser and Ron and then asked in a high-pitched squeak:

"Toddy is sorry to be asking, great Hermione Granger, but coulds youse be taking Toddy to the Chamber of Secrets? I is having somethings to deliver there. From great Headmaster Professor Albus Dumbledore."

"Oh yes, of course." said Hermione unthinkingly.

Then her questioning mind took over.

Hurrying behind her on the way to the Chamber of Secrets, Toddy was treaded to a heap of questions on House-Elves, where they lived, what life was like for them, how their magic worked, whether a red nose was red, and all sorts of other things. A certain Boggart-turned-man, watching from out the corner of his eyes while taking in the beauties of the party, could certainly sympathize.

Hermione opened the door to the Chamber without much trouble and called:

{ _Great Basilisk? Today is Christmas Eve, the holiday I mentioned to you; it seems Professor Dumbledore has not forgotten you, and sent this elf to bring you a present._ }

{ _How delightful…_ } said the Basilisk { _Whatever girl is outside may bring the Elf in if it is to both their likings._ }

Gingerly, Toddy walked into the Chamber and presented the Basilisk with a box wrapped in emerald-color paper.

The Basilisk (after asking the Elf and Hermione to look away) looked at it curiously, poked it with her muzzle, and then stared at it some more.

{ _How am I to open this?_ } she finally asked, eyes closed.

Hermione smacked herself in the forehead while Toddy the Castle-Elf apologized profusely and begged the Basilisk not to eat him. Hermione suggested he make more productive use of his time and use some of that telekinesis to open the books and levitate its contents to the Basilisk. The contents, as it turns out, were a letter written in emerald ink, and a strange contraption more or less resembling an aeroplane pilot's goggles.

Hermione read the letter, translating it to Parseltongue as she went for the Basilisk's benefit.

 _Dear Basilisk of Hogwarts,_

 _This poor wizard cannot fathom the weight of the burden your kind must bear — that you may never watch a friend in the eye lest this friend drop dead. For this reason, and, if one is being honest, because it would make the rest of this school's inhabitants safer, I have devoted some time to developing this set of enchanted eyeglasses._

 _They can be worn without too much discomfort and ought to allow you to see and be seen whilst blocking the harmful magic of your Gaze. Furthermore, I have set them to obey Parseltongue commands — 'on' and 'off' — that will cause them levitate either away from you or back into place._

 _The merriest of Yuletides to you,_

 _Signed Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Grand Sorcerer, Chief Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, Order of Merlin First Class, Etcetera, Etcetera, to tell the truth I honestly find this litany of honorifics quite boring, don't you? Anyway — bye-bye!_

* * *

With the enchanted goggles in place and working, Toddy popped away somewhere (presumably to carry the Basilisk's thanks to Dumbledore) while Hermione came back to the Hall, already planning out how she would reintroduce the Basilisk to the Hogwarts populations as a Boxing Day gift. For now, however, she was content to sit back and enjoy her own presents (books, naturally) in the company of her friends, saying hello to the various known faces she came across in the party.

Once the guests had reached dessert, Professors Flitwick and Dumbledore orchestrated a wondrous magical lights-show against the backdrop of the starry sky as seen through the enchanted ceiling; it culminated with a recreation of Spider Day in shiny silhouettes — Snape, being Snape, was puppeteering the ember-like form of the Dragon, and Professors Max and Vector handled the swarm of shadowy spider-shapes with amazing dexterity.

Loud applause erupted in the Hall.

* * *

The Centaurs were unfortunately not there when Hermione, Ron and Harry escorted the newly goggle-wearing Basilisk to the Great Hall, and for the first time she was allowed to gaze freely upon the faces of men and women. On December the 28th, a sudden and thick fall of snow had decided them to return to the Forest where their housings were in dire need of maintenance.

Max the Boggart was off in Diagon Alley: Dumbledore's gift to the sapient boggart had been a hefty sum in galleons to be spent on whatever human trinkets he wished to acquire. When he came back on New Year's Eve, he was now the proud owner of a wizard's trunk, a collection of books, various enchanted clothes, and perhaps more importantly — a wand.

As it turned out, the wording of Clause Three of the British Code of Wand Use , the one that forbid non-wizards from owning and using wands, only covered non-human _creatures_. Dumbledore and Ollivander both assured the Boggart that should he be found out at all, it would be very easy to point out that under Ministry classification, a Boggart was not a _creature_ , but a _non-being_.

As Hermione Granger best put it when she was told these uplifting news: " _Ah, Merlin bless loopholes._ "

The Boggart was overjoyed, shooting oddly smoke-like sparks all over the halls and running around like an excited child.

"Spells!" he shouted. "Hermione, I can cast _spells_! I can really be a _wizard_!"

"Yes, yes, well done!" she joined in before calming down someone and taking him by the sleeve. "But come now, stop skipping like that, or Filch will come around thinking you're Peeves or something. Besides, you have to actually learn how to _use_ it for it to count, don't you see?"

"You're right, you're right," said the boggart-man-child, quieting down but hugging Hermione. "But I can do _magic_!"

"Eghh-" said Hermione, nearly choking in her nonhuman friend's embrace, "yes, I find the academic ramifications of that factoid quite fascinating too, but _please-"_

 _"_ Oh!" fussed the Boggart, immediately letting go. "I'm so sorry, I always forget you humans need to breathe — and I should know, I once met someone whose worst fear was being strangled — oh Merlin — are you alright?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine," Hermione reassured him. "But as I said, you really need to get a magical education."

"Oh, will you teach me, Hermione? Please?" begged the Boggart, spontaneously dropping to his knees. (His quest to become human had led him to start expressing his emotions more and more in the past weeks, another thing Hermione had noted with academic fascination and social embarrassment.)

"I'm sorry, but I'm just a second-year student at magic…" she explained, "…even though I like to think I'm a rather good one. What you need is actual Professors… to go to Hogwarts, ideally… Oh, do you think you could try and turn into a _child_? A child about my age?"

"Aye-aye!" the Boggart acquiesced.

The bland face of a fair-haired, thirty-year-old, clean-shaven man he'd adopted for his trip to Diagon Alley swirled and bubbled, his body shrunk along with his suit, and a moment later Hermione was looking at a boy who was something like a cross of Harry and Neville, with a hint of Ron when it came to the length of the neck. The Boggart-Boy was wearing fairly average-looking Hogwarts robes, and still gripping his shiny new wand in his left hand, but by far the most striking thing about his new appearance was his pair of almost glowing, purple irises.

"Oh my!" complimented Hermione. "Boggy, you've done it again! I'll speak with Professor Dumbledore, I'm sure he'll arrange something — only — I can't keep calling you Boggy, can I? And what with the Professor, 'Max' would just get confusing… What will your name be?"

"What about… Humphrey?" suggested the Boggart-Boy in a very sweet eleven-year-old boy voice.

Hermione burst out laughing, at which display the Boggart still had an instinctive impulse to recoil. Over her cackle, she managed to burt out "No! No…! Just… No!", but refused to say more.

"Very well," said the false boy seriously, "in that case I will try to think of something else. It's late, Hermione, I think it would be better for you to _sleep_ — you humans do need to do that, right?"


	12. The Snape Situation

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This took a tad longer than usual, and for that I apologize. Originally there would have been more snippets of the various Professors' reaction to our dearest sentient Boggart, but it was stupid and repetitive and far less interesting than the Snape scene, so in the end I extended that one to being the main subplot of this chapter._

 **Chapter XI: The Snape Situation**

Ron and most of the others had left for a week-long holiday after the Feast — including Harry, whom the Weasleys had invited to spend the week at the Burrow. He hadn't gotten permission from his official guardians, of course, but he managed to slip onto the Express with his Invisibility Cloak and a little help from Fred and George, and the adults had all pretended not to notice his absence was at all irregular (which Hermione guessed must have been Professor Dumbledore's doing). The Centaurs were long gone, of course, and even the Professors and Hagrid were making themselves scarce. The bottom line was that Hermione practically at the Castle to herself to help the Boggart fine-tune his human disguise, socialize with the Basilisk and look for the Elvish Common Room.

Finally, she obtained an appointment with Professor Dumbledore on Friday afternoon. The guardian of the Spiraling Stairway (which had materialized on the fifth floor this time) was of course no longer the Golden Griffin. Who knew where that oddball had gone after his encounter with Hermione's lot in the Corridor? Though she _thought_ she'd spotted him at the Christmas Feast, briefly. Either way, a massive stone gargoyle in the likeness of a boar stood in the Griffin's old spot.

"Good morning, sir or madam, we have an appointment," the Boggart-Boy said briskly, taking every opportunity to practice the everyday things of human life.

The Boar, who looked rather bored, as a matter of fact, stepped aside while mumbling something like "C'm'rite'in".

Hermione led the way, firmly holding her Boggart friend's childlike hand.

Dumbledore was seated in his bright lavender armchair, his desk buried under scrolls upon scrolls of important-looking parchment. The Sorting Hat was napping, as were most of the Portraits, except for the old bald fellow, Headmaster Dippet, who was still annoying Headmaster Phineas Black with gossip.

The current, flesh-and-blood Headmaster greeted them warmly and motioned for them to sit down.

"Miss Granger!" he said. "It's always a pleasure. Could I press you to a sherbet lemon? And you, Mr…"

"I'll take the sherbet lemon, thank you!" interrupted the Boggart, greedily reaching for the sweet.

"Oh, so you are capable of eating as well?" remarked Dumbledore. "Gracious me, I hadn't expected such a thing of a being such as yourself…"

"Oh yes, Professor," Hermione began to explain, "it was one of the things we tested — he can eat just about anything, in fact — he doesn't need to , mind you — he doesn't even gain any weight from it, I rather suspect the food is Vanished as soon as it enters his body —"

"Miss Granger," said Dumbledore, gently but commandingly, "Lady Ravenclaw may have said that wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure, but do not forget that even her House Ghost is known for the rarity of her speech. There is, as they say, virtue in silence."

"Oh… forgive me," she apologized.

Damn her and her babbling. Everything was just so _interesting_.

"Now," Dumbledore began, "I understand that your friend seeks to study with you in good old Hogwarts…?"

The Boggart nodded enthusiastically.

"A worthy wish no doubt. And how may I call you?"

"We have agreed on Maximilian as a first name, sir," answered Maximilian, looking at the bowl of lemon drops on Dumbledore's desk, "but I am not sure which last name to take. Although… now that I think about it… perhaps 'Sweets'?"

"May I perhaps suggest Candy instead?" improved the old wizard. "A touch of americanism might be welcome… after all, 'transfer student' does seem like the most plausible cover story to give you, young Maximilian, should any inquiring mind look too closely into your case."

"I like it a lot, sir!" thanked Maximilian Candy, the Boggart, discreetly taking another sherbet lemon from the bowl. "So then… you do approve of me studying here?"

"Mr Candy!" protested Dumbledore, mock-outraged at the idea that he might _not_ have. "I have made it my motto as Headmaster that help shall always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it, and you definitely fall into that category, I believe. I would be failing my, if I may say so, impeccable career as Headmaster if I refused."

"Oh thank you, thank you, Professor!" said Maximilian, and Hermione doubled down on the gratitude.

"One more thing… if you don't mind —" said Hermione afterwards. "Might it be possible for Maximilian to attend in the same year and House as myself?"

"Year, you say? Would he not fall behind?" asked Dumbledore quizzically.

"No, Professor," said the Boggart with a touch of pride. "Do not forget that I am a Boggart, that is to say a born mind-reader. With her permission, I plan to read Hermione Granger's stellar schoolwork right out of her brilliant mind and copy it into mine. I could, no doubt, do the same with your own knowledge… but that would be too much like cheating — I do so want to live and grow up just like a true wizard would."

"I see…" nodded Dumbledore, eyes twinkling. "Well, in that case, for you to begin as a Second Year student come next Monday might easily be arranged. However, the House placement is… simply not my call to make."

He directed a meaningful twinkle of his blue eyes to the Sorting Hat, who was humming his song's tune in his sleep.

With a sharp nod of understanding, Hermione called in Parseltongue:

{ _Sorting Hat? Sorting Hat!_ }

{ _Hmmm… What? What?_ } said the Hat in the same language, waking up in a start. { _Oh!_ } "Oh! It's you, Miss Granger… what a delightful surprise! And there you are, Albus — and — and… by Jove. Who might _you_ be?"

"A Boggart, sir," said the false boy, nodding in respect. "My new name is Maximilian Candy, and I wish to be sorted, please."

"Oh-oh-oh…" chuckled the Hat. "A Boggart named Candy who wants to be Sorted. Bwahah. Bwahahahah! You did this, didn't you, Miss Grang-hahahahAHAHAHAHAAaaaah!…"

"He's always like that," Hermione told Maximilian, who was obviously wondering if he'd done something wrong.

"Aaah…" the Hat calmed down, and he would have swept a tear off had he had tears in the first place. "Right. Right. Well then, let's do this, Mr… heheh. Mr Candy."

Maximilian gently picked up the old ragged hat and set it on his head. It almost dropped down over his eyes, and Maximilian instinctively responded by inflating his cranium a bit so that the Hat would fit.

The result were a bit disturbing-looking, in Dumbledore and Hermione's opinion.

After a few minutes of silent debating, the Hat called out:

"Fine, fine! GRYFFINDOR! You friend drives a hard bargain, Miss Granger!"

Hermione and Dumbledore clapped politely as Maximilian took off the Hat and set it back down on its shelf.

"Well, I think that takes care of that," concluded Dumbledore with a twinkle, scribbling a few notes on a blank scroll.

"Good-bye, Professor!" said Hermione as she headed out. "And thank you for everything!"

She was out of their sight, but yet far enough not to hear, when the Boggart lingering behind her asked Dumbledore in the most innocent tone imaginable:

"By the way, Professor… who was she, the pale girl?"

Realizing this was probably a private conversation, she swiftly walked out, refusing to hear anymore. She was a virtuous Gryffindor, not some sort of… of Snape.

* * *

Ah yes, Snape. Monday — the day she was reunited with Harry and Ron and Ginny and Luna and Neville, and also Maximilian's first-ever day of class — Monday went swimmingly. But with Tuesday came Potions Class. And with Potions Class came Professor Snape.

Snape was looming around the Cauldrons, as usual. He'd written instructions on the board and told them to get to it already, all as usual. He hadn't bothered with such pesky conveniences as a roll-call, again as usual.

They were preparing a Shrinking Solution. Harry didn't quite know how to brew the potion, but he had a general idea. Ron was working with him — that was to say that for the most part he stayed by Harry's side and chatted as the other boy half-heartedly stirred the greenish liquid and dropped strange ingredients into it.

Draco Malfoy was sitting back contentedly as his two henchmen (Hermione had see him, they had ridiculous names, something like Lobster and Boil) stirred his cauldron for him at his commands. Hermione supposed it wasn't _that_ bad, since Draco was at least paying attention enough to give them _accurate_ orders… but it still painted a very vivid, very obnoxious picture of smug upper-class laziness.

As far as she could tell, both her friends and the Slytherins' potions were correct, if not at all was still quite an achievement given that this was actually a Third-Year Potion; Snape was obviously just in a bad mood and wanted to have a reason to yell on some students to work off his nerves (despicable, that man).

The same praise could not be given to poor Neville, who had paired up with Sally-Anne Perks. Professor Snape was staring at his bubbly orange potion, almost hypnotically, and this made the poor boy shiver and shake, so much so that he couldn't stir properly, and thus the Potion kept getting worse and worse.

Hermione would have helped, truly she would, but she was quite busy with her own potion, not to mention her rather peculiar partner Maximilian.

"Orange, Longbottom," said Snape suddenly, ladling some of Neville's brew up and allowing it to splash back into the cauldron, so that everyone could see. "Orange. Tell me, boy, does anything penetrate that thick skull of yours? Did you not hear me say, quite plainly, that only one rat spleen was needed? Didn't I _tell_ you that a dash of leech juice would suffice?"

"No, you didn't, you just wrote it down in your awful shorthand on the board," muttered Hermione for herself; thankfully, Professor Snape hadn't heard her and continued:

"Longbottom, at the end of this lesson we will feed a few drops of this potion to your toad and see what happens. Perhaps that will encourage you to apply yourself _properly_ to the art of Potions in the future."

Neville was pink, trembling, on the verge of tears. Maximilian turned his attention to him for a flicker of an instant and then told Hermione in a whisper:

"His fear has shifted again. It has turned back to Snape from Max."

"We've got to do _something_!" said Hermione. "It'd take an expert, or at least me, to set the Potion right at this point, Sally-Anne can't possibly manage it, and whatever Neville's got is sure to be poisonous to toads…"

Steeling himself, Maximilian nodded, and, before Hermione could say any more, he said loudly to Snape:

"Professor, do not drag an innocent toad into it. If you want a test subject, _I_ will be happy to drink some of Neville's Potion. I assure you, it is a nonstandard variation, but no less efficient than the version you are used to."

"Ridiculous." spat Snape.

Maximilian had a recoil at the hated word, but he took a deep breath and walked forward to Neville's cauldron.

"The Shrinking Solution is meant to shrink its user whilst also reverting them to a younger state, I understand?" he said while ladling up a portion of Potion.

"Don't be an idiot…" protested Snape, "…whatever your name is! Put this down, you'll kill yourself! Even if it were correctly prepared, the Solution wouldn't even be ready!…"

But Maximilian was already greedily swallowing Neville's orange potion.

Snape seemed about to try and reach for the Bezoar on his desk when the false boy's body began shrinking and shifting. A moment later, his form had melted into that of a baby still wearing Maximilian's now much-too-big robes and wizard's hat.

"Well, professor?" said Maximilian in a squeaky baby voice.

Neville couldn't believe his own eyes.

Snape's looked like they were about to burst out of his skull.

"Agh…ahghh…"

Meanwhile, Hermione almost couldn't fight back her laughter.

The panting Snape noticed this and jumped at the opportunity to find his figurative footing.

"Right! Miss Granger! Nothing about this is _funny_! Thirty points from Gryffindor! And you,… what's-your-name, forty points from whatever your House is for your foolishness! You were lucky, you brat, not _clever_!"

Snape handed Maximilian an antidote to get him back to normal, and then told everyone to go back to what they were doing.

Hermione was fuming at the considerable loss in points. So he couldn't take a joke, could he. Well now it was _personal_ between her and one Severus Snape.

* * *

At the next Potions Class, they were preparing a draught meant to heal a kneazle from vermicious nosepox. Harry had made a show of not having the faintest idea what a kneazle, or a vermicious nosepox, was, and Snape had docked Gryffindor ten points.

Harry and Ron, Draco and his goons, and Neville and Sally-Anne had once again paired up, as had Hermione and Maximilian.

Noticing the latter, Snape said:

"Ah… there you are, Mr _Candy_. Professor Dumbledore told me of your… _circumstances_. Well, I would lament that you seem to be just as much of a brazen dunderhead as your house-mates… but at least, if our friendly neighborhood know-it-all chose you as her partner two times over, you cannot be entirely useless at potions brewing. There may be a flicker of hope for you yet."

{ _Don't answer, Maximilian,_ } Hermione hissed to her angered friend, who had learned Parseltongue along with the rest of Hermione's magical knowledge. { _By his standards, this is a compliment._ }

"Miss Granger!" snarled Snape, turning back around to face her once more. "There will be absolutely no _hissing_ in this room! _Thirty points from Gryffindor_!"

"You'll regret this," Hermione answered icily, looking at Snape right in the eye. "I will find something, and you will regret every point you ever took, every punishment you unrightfully gave out, every sadistic threat you made."

"WHAT?" blurted Snape, his sallow face gaining quite the purple complexion. "How _dare_ you-!? _Five hundred points from Gryffindor_!"

"I am Hermione Jean Granger. Some of my dearest friends are a millennium-old Basilisk and the Vanquisher of Voldemort. _I got O-s on every single exam I took last year._ Trust me. I _will_ find a way."

Bragging and gloating was, actually, a lot of fun in the right circumstances. She now understood Draco Malfoy just a bit more.

The class had mostly abandoned their potions to witness the events unfolding in front of them.

"Hahah. Hahahah. Hah. Heheh. No. Nuhuh." laughed Snape nervously, losing his composure. "FIFTEEN THOUSAND POINTS FROM-"

"Slytherin," finished Hermione.

"SLYTHERIN?" screamed the overgrown bat in outrage. " _NEVER_!"

"Too late for that, my good sir," smirked Hermione.

Harry and Ron were for some reason still working on their potion, but found the time to chuckle. Some Slytherins had gotten it too, but their reaction was notably less joyful.

To set Snape's mind at ease, Hermione clarified:

"You just said 'Fifteen thousand points from Slytherin'. _Sir_."

" _I did not say Fifteen thousand points from Slytherin! **I did NOT!**_ "

"Actually, _sir_ , you just did it again," Hermione pointed out.

"Why you! I doesn't _count_! You TRICKED me!"

"Did I indeed?" said Hermione, not missing a beat. "Why, for a mere Gryffindor to have tricked the Head of Slytherin, that is an achievement worthy of at least twenty thousand points to Gryffindor, wouldn't you say?"

"Twenty thousand points? TO GRYFFINDOR!?"

"Why _thank_ you, Professor!"

"ARRRGGGGH!"

"Oh dear," said Hermione with an overacted air of concern, "it seems that poor Professor Snape's nerves have given out. Why, do my eyes trick me? I believe you, Ron and Harry, happen by pure chance to have brewed a Sleeping Potion instead of a Nosepox Remedy! …Thank you, Harry. Now Professor, just drink this, everything's going to be alright."

"Wh-no! Wh-wh… grglglll…"

It had all been arranged very carefully. The 'faulty' potion of Harry and Ron had worked just as expected, and, the moment Snape was out cold, Hermione tapped the window — carefully, ever so carefully. This was the signal awaited by Hedwig, who immediately flew off in search of Professor Dumbledore. She bore a petition, signed by most of Gryffindor House, several Hufflepuffs, and a couple of Ravenclaw (chiefly Luna Lovegood). It requested (and that was a rule which Hogwarts should always have had in the first place) a limit be put in place over how many points a given Professor could give or take in a single month (although the Headmaster could trump that rule if needed). The limit was set at one thousand points of a month; without being too restrictive, it was low enough that even if Snape awarded Slytherin the whole quota every chance he got, he couldn't possibly get the House of the Cunning's point-count out of the negatives before the end of the year.

* * *

There was much rejoicing in the Gryffindor Common Room that night. Some older students had slipped in several bottles of what Hermione _hoped_ was only butterbeer, and people were dancing in euphoria around an ablaze caricature of 'old Bat-head'. Hermione and her friends were naturally the guests of honor of the party… including Maximilian, who, thanks to the popularity of his own prank at the previous lesson (and it _had_ been a prank, there was no longer any doubt in anyone's mind on that point), could definitely put aside any worries about being accepted by his new House.

Strutting about in oversized regal garb, Fred and George Weasley made an appearance in the middle of the feast. Beaming, they held out most-swords (which, to Hermione's delight, had been transfigured to resemble the legendary Sword of Gryffindor, a clever nod to History that had surely been intended for her). With the dull blade of the weapons, they patted her, Harry, Ron and Maximilian on their shoulders.

"We hereby dub thee," they spoke in unison, "Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Junior Marauders. Rise, Sir Scarhead, Sir Gulper, Sir Ronniekins… and, of course, Lady Macbrains!"

Angry hoots rang out above their head. Hedwig was flying in circles, looking downright murderous. At Harry's beckon, she flew down and perched herself on the tip of Fred's sword.

"Oh, hm, fine. I doth dub thee, owl… Lady Mailbox."

Lady Mailbox chirped her approval, and, with a very noble air, went to perch herself on the candelabra.

The ceremony was over, and cheering exploded.

Peeves and the Metal Monkey were guests of honor who congratulated the newly-knighted pranksters by tugging n their hair and robes and (in Peeves' case) singing silly songs.

Nearly-Headless Nick, also present, seemed to be enjoying himself, chasing Peeves all through the room to shut him up.

Neville's fear of Snape and made way for boundless mirth.

Even the Portraits were laughing to tears, repeating the tale of the momentous Potions Class to each other over and over.

In the confusion, no one paid any mind to an unassuming tabby cat with strange glass-like markings around its eyes. It tried fruitlessly to get Hermione's attention, failed to do so, and eventually seemed to give up. Throughout the rest of the evening, it could be seen lying by the fireplace, lapping up some cream it had been given by Seamus Finnigan and watching the proceedings with an air of warm approval.


	13. The Marauder

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _And a new chapter, featuring the debut of Notorious Mass-Murderer Sirius Black. Something which the books didn't explore quite as much as they should have is the Senior Marauders' expertise when it came to secret rooms and passages at Hogwarts. So let's fix that, shall we? Also featured in this chapter: portraits, hats, and plot-twists some of you saw coming a mile away._

 **Chapter XII: The Marauder**

When, on the next day, Professor Dumbledore made an announcement at dinner concerning the change in the points regulations, none of the Gryffindors were surprised. What was rather more surprising, however, was what the Headmaster added then:

"In other miscellaneous news, we have just received word that notorious mass murderer, Death Eater and all-around Dark Wizard Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban and is most likely going to try and infiltrate Hogwarts. Now, we would consider it a personal favor if all of you would kindly report any sighting of bloodthirsty maniacs on castle grounds, may we trust you with that?"

Once he'd said this, Dumbledore sat back down and tucked into his turkey, all the questions of the students and recriminations of the staff falling on deaf ears.

Hermione hurriedly translated the announcement for the Basilisk, who, thanks to her protective goggles, was now able to eat in the Great Hall.

{ _The muggle-born girl must tell them that I shall protect the school against all threats._ } said the serpent.

Hermione translated this pledge that greatly impressed the students and obviously went a long way to reassure them — after all, that Basilisk had taken down a fearsome dragon, she could be trusted with some petty Dark Wizard. Hermione herself, however, was more than a little concerned, particularly for one of her friends.

"Harry," she said once she'd gotten back to her seat, "this could be bad. _Really_ bad."

"What do you mean?" asked Harry in confusion. "Not that escaped mass murders could ever be good news, but, I mean, we've locked up two Voldemorts in a row and survived an Acromantula invasion. What's so bad about this Black character?"

"Sirius Black was one of Tom Riddle's most efficient agents in the first war," explained Hermione, "that's in all the history books. He was a spy for years, he gained the trust of Professor Dumbledore and… well, and that of your parents. And in the end, he was the one who gave out the location of their hiding place to Riddle. He is, arguably, just as responsible for their death as the Turban himself."

"O-oh…" was all Harry could say.

"What she's trying to say is," Ron piped in, his mouth still half-full of sausages, "that if Sirius Black, murderer of the Potters, is trying to get into Hogwarts, then it's either to break out You-Know-Who, or, more likely… he wants to kill _you_ , mate. 'Finish the job', as it were."

"Ah. Yes, I can see how that could be a problem," acknowledged Harry.

"I suppose we shall all just have to keep alert this year," said Maximilian.

* * *

{ _Today is a rainy day. It is best to stay inside a door._ }

"Not bad," lauded Hermione, "not bad! But the word for 'indoors' doesn't have anything to do with doors in Parseltongue, it's { _indoors_ }… _seh-shll_ … 'in-the-den', etymologically, I believe."

{ _It is best to say indoors._ } Luna Lovegood corrected herself.

"Yes, well done!" said the brown-haired girl. "You've really been making progress, Luna."

"Why thank you."

"Oh, by the way, what do you think of the Sirius Black problem?"

"Oh, that's obvious, isn't it? I'm honestly surprised Professor Dumbledore didn't mention it. Sirius never was in Azkaban in the first place, and he wasn't guilty, it's all a big misunderstanding. He and the singer Stubby Boardman were the same person all along. It's all in the _Quibbler_. My father found out all about it."

"…Wait," said Hermione, playing along with Luna's umpteenth wild theory. "If Stubby Black was innocent, then who betrayed the Potters?"

"Peter Pettigrew, obviously."

"Now that's just — that's just _offensive_. Peter Pettigrew died a martyr, you can't say things like that about him!"

"Oh, no, he didn't die."

"What?"

"He was secretly a metamorphmagus, that's the key point. He faked the explosion and took on the shape of Sirius Black, hoping Stubby Boardman's fans would protect him from the wrath of Dumbledore. Only, the twelve bystanders weren't actually fans of Stubby Boardman, they were more Celestina Warbeck people, that was Pettigrew's great miscalculation. So, well, he had to kill them after they refused to help him, and that was about when the Aurors arrived and imprisoned him as Sirius Black."

"So you're saying that it is _Peter Pettigrew_ who has just broken out of jail under the guise of Sirius Black?"

"Well, no. The fake Pettigrew-as-Sirius that Professor Dumbledore is worried about is most probably a lovesick Dementor who wanted to see the world to forget the trials of romance, and he made a deal with Pettigrew to assume his false identity for a while. It's not like Pettigrew is using it much, being locked up in Azkaban."

"Luna," said Hermione, fighting back laughter, "Luna Luna Luna, never change!…"

* * *

In the middle of the night, Hermione Granger suddenly woke up with a start.

"Wait. What's a Dementor?" she asked to herself.

There was a groan from the next bed as Sally-Anne made known her intent to _sleep_ that night.

"Oh, fine, I'll look it up tomorrow. Spoilsport." muttered Hermione, sinking back into her pillow.

* * *

"Splendid work, Miss Granger," said Professor McGonagall, showing her perfectly-transfigured goblet for the rest of the class to see. "Two points to Gryffindor."

(Following the regulations, most of the Professors had drastically reduced the number of points awarded or removed for any given deed, thus keeping themselves in the clear for the whole month without having to worry about the quotas.)

"Thank you, Professor."

"Well," continued the bespectacled witch, now speaking to the entire class, "I believe this concludes the lesson for today. You may go."

She then leaned in towards Hermione and said quietly:

"Miss Granger, Professor Dumbledore told me he would like to see you in his office tonight at six. Could this be arranged?"

"Of course," answered the girl, already wondering what was up with the Headmaster.

After informing her friends of where she was going (it turned out Harry and Ron wouldn't have missed her anyway, as they had Quidditch practice), she set out in search of the Spiraling Stairwell. She found it had, for whatever reason, materialized where the Charms Corridor should have been. Where exactly the Charms Corridor had gone was a question best left untouched, tempting as it may be to try and track it down. She remembered Ron's story about the time the Twins had been missing for a whole week after setting out to locate a cupboard that had vanished overnight.

The Bored Boar was still guarding the entrance in lieu of the Golden Griffin, and just like the previous time, it moved aside without making any fuss, recognizing Hermione was invited.

"Ah! Miss Granger!" greeted the Headmaster.

He looked a bit tired behind his usual cheerful expression, and the Sorting Hat was standing on his desk, with just the _proudest_ , most _offended_ expression of outrage.

"Miss Granger, do not say a word to this man," huffed the Hat.

"Come now, Sorting Hat, I've known you for many years, and…" Dumbledore trailed off before turning back to Hermione. "Oh, it is of no use. Miss Granger, I have the Portraits' testimony that Sirius Black somehow found his way into my office last night and put on the Sorting Hat, with whom he had quite the conversation."

"But here's the rub," continued a snooty-looking old portrait-man with a blue hat, "it was one of those mental conversations old Ravenclaw spelled into the Hat — we couldn't hear a word of it."

"Quite so, Marcellus…" nodded Dumbledore. "Well, the problem is that the Sorting Hat refuses to tell me anything about what was said."

"Albus, I was _made_ this way." spoke the Sorting Hat. "You know perfectly well that people like Malfoy wouldn't let any old hat read their children's minds as I do, if I was not bound never to reveal what I see during a Sorting. You're just wasting my time, I have a song to compose, you know. For next year. I can feel it coming along already, it will be very good, I assure you."

"Well, Miss Granger," explained the old wizard, cutting off the Hat's digression,"you see my problem. Having learned of the way you handled the fiendish bonds left by Salazar Slytherin on the person of the Great Basilisk of Hogwarts, I assumed that, perhaps, you could bring this same knack you have for finding loopholes to this particular mess."

"I'm honored, Professor," thanked Hermione, blushing. She liked praise. A lot. "Now let me see. Hat, you talked about a Sorting, didn't you?"

"Eh? Uh? Yes, Miss Granger, yes. I cannot reveal the contents of a Sorting beyond my final ruling," answered the Hat. "What are you getting at?"

"Did you actually Sort Sirius Black anywhere once your discussion came to an end?" the girl further asked.

"Eh?" the Hat began to chuckle. "Eheheh… Hoho! Hah! No! I believe I didn't! Miss Granger, Miss Granger, I never… heheheh!"

" _Thank_ you, Miss Granger!" said Dumbledore, beaming. "Simple, but efficacious! Twenty points to Gryffindor, I say!"

Hermione thanked him again profusely.

"And now, Hat," Dumbledore told the enchanted piece of headwear, "it is time, as they say, to _spill the beans_."

"Fine, fine." mumbled the Sorting Hat. "Since you asked me so _nicely_. Bah. Black entered this room through the secret passage behind Heliotrope Wilkins's portrait."

"There is a secret passage behind Heliotrope Wilkins's portrait? A secret passage into this room?" said Dumbledore, alarmed.

"Why yes, Albus," answered the portrait of Wilkins himself, "I'm surprised you never noticed. I put it there myself. It leads to the private chambers that used to belong to a rather shapely Charms Mistress by the name of…"

"Yes, yes," Dumbledore cut off, "we do not need to hear the _details_. Hm. Well then, Hat, go on, go on."

"If you'll let me!…" said the Hat sharply. "Alright, alright. His mind was in a terrible state… the Dementors really did a number on the poor sod, I assure you, though it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be after twelve years… anyway, still the same old Gryffindor, every bit of him. The boy — oh, well I suppose he's not quite a boy anymore, but you humans all so young to me — he's really innocent, of course. He's looking for the real culprit, the Pettigrew lad. He survived, too."

"I… will need to write this down," said Dumbledore, suddenly quite pale, and he levitated a sheet of parchment and quill into his hand with a flick of his wrist. "But go on for now — why did Sirius Black come here of all places?"

"I believe he was looking for an old creation of his," explained the Sorting Hat, "the… Marauder's Map. An ingenious creation, from what I could see in his mind. Normally a moving map of the Castle and Grounds, created by the four Marauders together, you see — and it's also bound to each of them; much like your Deluminator, Albus, if one Marauder had it, he could use it to know precisely where the other ones were, even if they were outside of Hogwarts."

"Fascinating…" mouthed Dumbledore.

Hermione had to admit that _did_ sound like rather impressive magic. She also would like to know what a Deluminator was, and how that Map worked in general, and all sorts of other things, but she held off her impulse to start asking questions. For now.

"First he checked Filch's closet, apparently," continued the Hat, "but the Map was gone; so he wondered if by any chance _you_ hadn't found it and added it to your collection of trinkets."

"Alas, I would have loved to, my good Hat, but no." said Dumbledore sadly.

"Yes, I told young Sirius as much," opined the Hat, "when he asked me if I'd seen you handling the Map…Well, there you have it. Sirius Black is innocent and looking for justice against a traitor and former pet rat. That's all I can tell you."

Hermione and Dumbledore looked at each other slowly.

"…Pet rat, did you say?" Dumbledore asked.

"Why yes," repeated the Hat, "a pet rat, Ron Weasley's pet rat. Didn't I go over that already?"

Hermione and Dumbledore shared another long look.

"I think this conversation will be greatly improved by some tea and a few of those ever-tasty Chocoballs, hm?"

* * *

"Ron, you're not going to believe this." said Hermione as she entered the boy's dormitories. "…Ron?"

Ron's bed was empty. He was not in the Common Room, either, she'd have seen him there. And it didn't sound like him to be in the Common Room. Perhaps he was out making mischief with Harry or Seamus? No, there they were, both working studiously on their Charms homework.

"Harry?" she called. "I have news, do you know where Ron has gone?"

"No," answered the black-haired boy, surprised, "he went to the lavatories half an hour ago… say, you're right, he never did come back!…"

"Have any of the Portraits seen Ron Weasley?" Hermione called out to one of the various portraits adorning the wall.

It happened to be that of a youthful version of Professor McGonagall, much to Hermione's surprise.

"Well that's odd." she muttered.

"I beg your pardon?" answered the portrait-McGonagall in the real Transfiguration Professor's unmistakeable voice. "…You're Miss Granger, aren't you? My real counterpart has mentioned you quite often to me."

"Honored, Professor," said Hermione, truthfully. "I was just surprised because according to _Hogwarts: A History_ , all the portraits in Hogwarts ought to depict deceased individuals… but then again, that Dippet fellow did say his human self was still alive, too!… Oh, never mind. The point is that a student is missing, Ron Weasley, and we're worried something bad may have happened to him. Could you please try and get the word out to the other Portraits, to see if someone's seen him anywhere in the Castle?"

"Oh, dear! I'll go at once," said the McGonagall in the portrait. "And believe me, were I my real self, I would give Gryffindor ten points for that bit of quick thinking, Miss… Granger."

She then vanished from her frame.

"…Yeah, that _was_ pretty clever," Harry added. "Why don't people always do that? Why does the school even need someone like Filch when the Portraits could act as the ultimate spying system?"

"Portraits are lazy," answered Seamus.

Harry shot a look to one of the other portraits adorning the circular wall of the Common Room, a fat wizard with a red nose, dozing off.

"…Can't argue with that," he said.

* * *

The McGonagall-portrait came back escorted by the portrait of a sharply dressed wizard wearing a blue cot and hat.

"Young madam!" began the portrait-man in a commanding, military voice. "I am entitled Hengist Rawkes, and I have located the Weasley."

"Thank you very much, sir," thanked Hermione. "Where is he?"

"He has been manhandled by a humanoid specimen answering to the moniker of Sirius Black, madam," explained Rawkes. "The ruffian has convoyed the Weasley to a secret chamber oftentimes dubbed the Secret Marauder Lair."

"And where is that room, Hengist?" asked McGonagall's portrait.

"Second floor, rightwise of Classroom 31. Knock thrice on the stone that bears the marking of an eyeball and enunciate: _We Hate Snivellus_."

"Right," said Hermione with determination. "Harry? Do you think we should get the Basilisk, too?"

"Gadzooks, madam, if I may!" objected Rawkes before Harry could answer. "The Lair is, methinks, much too narrow for any sort Basilisk."

"We ought to get Maximilian then. He'll fit through anything." suggested Harry.

"Good idea!"

* * *

As the three friends (two human, one not) walked towards the Secret Marauder Lair (which, with a name like that, sounded like Fred and George had created it), Harry wondered aloud:

"Shouldn't we have warned somebody? Like… Dumbledore, or maybe the real Professor McGonagall?"

"Eh," said Hermione without a care in the world. "When have we ever not handled this sort of thing ourselves?"

There was a long pause.

"Do all students behave this way?" asked Maximilian then.

"If they don't, it's their loss," Hermione answered.

* * *

They got to the door to Classroom 31. About four feet to the right, one of the stones was indeed marked with a drawing of an eye. Which blinked at them. Not to be scared away, Hermione confidently tapped the stone three times and intoned 'We Hate Snivellus'.

The stones began to bubble like overwatered soap and popped one by one, revealing what did indeed look like a classroom.

The desks and chairs, however, were strewn haphazardly across the room rather than neatly lined up. On the blackboard, _'Why Severus Snape is the worst person in the world — Lesson One_ ' was written in chalk and underline twice, in red.

Ron was tied up on the teacher's desk, and a tall wizard with long black hair and a shabby coat was circling him slowly, wand pointed at him. Ron was whimpering faintly.

"Mr Black," Hermione began, "we know you're innocent and we don't intend to harm you, but would you please give us our friend back?"

"WHO TOLD YOU HOW TO GET IN HERE?" screamed Black, lurching at her.

Maximilian turned into a large pillow and shielded Hermione.

"WH-Mffff!"

"Mr Black, I asked you something." repeated Hermione. "Thanks, Maximilian, by the way."

" _Mff…_ " mumbled Sirius, pulling himself away from the cushion, which immediately turned back into a boy. "…who the hell are you and how in Merlin's name did you do this?"

"My name is Hermione Granger," she answered, "and these are my friends Maximilian Candy and Harry Potter."

"Harry…?" said the wizard softly, seemingly on the brink of tears. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! You… you look so much like James…"

Harry didn't know quite what to make of this strange man who was now kissing his hand.

"Uh… it's alright, sir…" he hesitated, "…if you'll let Ron go, that is…"

"What? Oh! The Weasley boy…" Sirius said, apparently just remembering he was in the room. "But I need to find Wormtail!"

"That would be Peter Pettigrew, right?" confirmed Harry. "If I got what Hermione said right."

"Wh… yes, how do you…" hesitated Sirius before returning to full volume: "Do you know where he is, the stinking rat?"

"No we don't!" answered Hermione in kind. "We're a group of friendly Gryffindor friends who only want to help and we had no idea until you showed up that there was anything amiss about that rat!"

Only _Hermione_ could _yell_ a sentence that long. At least, that is what one could read plainly in Harry and Maximilian's eyes.

"Er…" said Ron.

"Oh right, you're still tied up!" Hermione said. " _Emancipare!_ "

The Conjured ropes holding Ron to the desk vanished and he slowly got up.

"Uh, the thing is…" confessed the boy, looking at the floor. "I actually kinda _did_ know…"

"What." said all four other people in the room.


	14. The Story of Scabbers

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Sirius, Secrets, Scabbers and Snakes! Several S-s in this Story! As you can see we're gently headed towards the end of Second Year, and towards the 50k mark. Which is honestly sort of amazing to me. I never foresaw that story being this big! While I'm on the topic, many thanks to all who Favourited, Reviewed and/or Followed this story! This means the world to me!_

 **Chapter XIII: The Story of Scabbers**

And Ron explained. It had taken Sirius agreeing to surrender his wand to get the Weasley talking, but Hermione did it, and so he explained.

No, Ron didn't know Scabbers was a criminal. But he _had_ known, for a while, that Scabbers was a human — or at least that he _could_ be a human sometimes, when he wanted to.

Soon after Ron had come to Hogwarts and the 'prank war' had begun, he'd found himself alone in his room with Scabbers, working on a half-baked attempt to prank the Twins. The old rat had grown more and more restless before suddenly turning into a strange, pudgy, still very ratty wizard in a dirty, ragged suit.

"Just let me handle that, Ron!" he had said.

Ron had understandably been rather terrified. Wand pointed at the man, the red-head had threatened to call for a Professor right there and then if the rat didn't give a _very_ good explanation of who he was and what he'd done with the real Scabbers.

"But I _am_ Scabbers!…" the wizard had then explained with a bit of a forced smile. "Why, surely you didn't imagine a rat found at the Burrow could be anything but a _magical_ rat?… Now look, look, Ron, I may look like a man now, but I'm still the same old Scabbers — here, I…, I can tell you exactly what we had for breakfast on the day we left for Hogwarts — bacon, eggs, and you would have had some sausage, only — only you noticed me and you gave your share to your poor old rat…! Thank you for that, by the way. You're… you're the best master a rat could ask for. And your mother's cooking is wonderful."

Ron, while impressed, had still complained that a rat turning into a man at random was still pretty weird and kinda creepy.

"Well, your Transfiguration Professor, bless her old heart," Scabbers had continued, "she can turn into a cat, can't she? Why couldn't a rat, a magical one, I mean, do the same, except… in reverse? And besides, I just want to be your friend, really I do, Ron. It gets so lonely, being an old rat, never talking to anyone… but my powers _must_ remain a secret, you see…"

"Why?"

"I'm _special,_ Ron," Scabbers had pleaded, "I'm _unique_ , can't you see? If wizards, grown-up wizards, knew about me, they'd put me in a cage in the Department of Mysteries and study me all day long to learn how I work — and-and that's if they don't just cut me open from the get-go!… I can't allow it, I can't what would _you_ do in my place?… Ron, I'm sorry, but either you'll let me be your friend, or… or I'll have to Memory-Charm you. Make you forget you ever saw my human form."

Faced with that choice, Ron had agreed to keep the rat's secret. Week after week, the Amazing Magical Rat had helped him plot and execute his slapstick revenge schemes against the Twins, revealing magical prowess that put some actual wizards to shame and teaching Ron a few tricks along the way. He and Ron had grown close — Scabbers, more than a bet, was now something like another big brother, a brother who was perhaps weirder and dirtier than the other five combined, but also one who'd stick out for Ron… for a change. And as Ron, thanks to Harry and Hermione, had met a Basilisk and later learned of an evil turban, a rat who could turn into a wizard had become less and less of an oddity in his mind. He'd debated letting Harry and Hermione in on the secret, but Scabbers was violently against it himself, and when Ron's two Hogwarts friends revealed they'd been keeping their Parseltongue a secret fro him, he decided turnabout was fair play and put all worries to rest.

Then the Riddle Meetings had started. Scabbers refused to talk about it, for all that Ron tried to persuade him. The rat looked more and more worried the more time Ron spent worrying about the way to rid Hogwarts of Tom Riddle. One evening Scabbers had seemed just on the brink of offering his help to the trio — but then he recoiled back, every feature of his body the very image of fear. Ron didn't blame him, really — you couldn't expect too much bravery out of a rat, even an Amazing Magical one.

Only, the next day, Scabbers had disappeared, leaving a note on a scrap of parchment in that strange, scratchy handwriting Ron knew very well by then.

 _I'm sorry. Good bye._

* * *

There was a long, long moment of heavy silence once Ron was done with his story.

"What am I going to do?!…" Sirius then wailed.

"Well, what did you _intend_ to do?" asked Hermione, gathering her wits.

"I…" hesitated Sirius. "I'm not entirely sure… but the plan, first and foremost, was to catch Wormtail… and then,… kill him, maybe?… Or bring the traitor to Dumbledore, get a pardon for myself… I don't even remember!…"

"But…" started Ron. "No matter what he did before… the Scabbers _I_ knew was a good bloke. He just… he doesn't _deserve_ to be… to be…"

"Well I see that _now!_ " snapped Sirius, suddenly shouting. "I _should_ have known… he was still my friend, before — he made mistakes, terrible mistakes, but he's still the same man underneath, the same man I could have called brother twenty years ago… he wasn't some sort of deranged spy, just a poor sod… I shouldn't have fixated on — only, I _couldn't_ think of all that in Azkaban, I couldn't think of _forgiveness_ …"

"Why not?" asked Hermione innocently.

"Because of the Dementors!…" replied Sirius. "They take the joy and the good right out of you — the longer you're around them, the more like them you become — twisted, petty, cruel, _cold_. I stayed sane because I had things neither happy nor vil to cling to — thirst for revenge, and regret, and worry for you, Harry — but as you can see, it looks like it didn't keep me as well as I thought. Even that… even that, they took the meaning out of it, and _I didn't even notice_!"

"Sorry," interrupted Hermione, "but what's a Dementor?"

"Poor innocent girl!" said the wizard. "Dementors… they're the most rotten people in this world — Hell, I'd say they're the most rotten _things_. You know Goblins, right?"

"Yes, yes I do!" answered Hermione, but Sirius continued before she could launch into a detailed summary of all the books she'd read about Goblins.

"Well," he said, "imagine Goblins who live on an island of stormy, foggy doom. Goblins whom no wizards know how to kill and the best Aurors can barely subdue. And imagine that these super-goblins hoard not gold and jewels… but bits of human souls."

Ron, Hermione and Harry gulped loudly. Maximilian just seemed interested.

"Yes, quite." agreed Sirius. "Oh, and they look like floating corpses dressed up as You-Know-Who, to boot."

"Oh, I'm, I'm sorry for you, Mr Black!…" said Harry with emotion.

"Sirius, please, Harry, just Sirius…" said Sirius quietly, letting the one he'd almost forgotten was his godson hug him tightly.

* * *

The five people then wracked their brains for quite a while, trying to figure out what to do with Sirius Black, now that they all agreed sending Peter Pettigrew to Azkaban would be both extremely unethical and extremely impractical. In the end, Maximilian and Harry agreed that they should get Professor Dumbledore to help sort things out. Hermione, Ron and Sirius would rather have resolve this between the five of them, but eventually let the Boggart run along to fetch the Headmaster.

"My, my," the Grand Sorcerer was muttering when he walked by, "I do hope this is truly important, I was teaching Alchemy to Seventh-Years, and I am not sure they can handle my enchanted stove all on their own…"

Dumbledore was at first only mildly surprised to find a secret room he didn't know. But then his eyes met Sirius's.

"Hi, Professor," said the fugitive. "I'm innocent."

* * *

"Well then, Sirius, I believe I may have an employ for you, my boy," said Dumbledore contentedly. "One such that no pesky Ministry people would dare, or even think, to have a look there. You see, ever since the Acromantula ate the pixies and turned traitor, I've been missing a guardian or two in the Third Floor Corridor…"

"…I'm sorry?" asked Sirius in confusion.

"I will be blunt, Sirius. Would you like to be Hogwarts's new Voldemort-keeper?"

"… _what_?!"

"If any student asks, of course, you'll just be a magical replica of Sirius Black whom I created to scare people away… Such a thing as a magical duplicate wouldn't be unheard of around here."

Dumbledore stared pointedly at Maximilian when saying that, for reasons Sirius didn't understand (not that there were many things Sirius Black understood about Dumbledore's last few sentences).

"What… who…"

"Miss Granger," said Dumbledore with a smile, "I see Sirius is just bursting with questions, and I know you want nothing more than to answer them all in excruciating detail. Thus, well, would you do so on my behalf? I really would like to go back to the Alchemy laboratory before my eager apprentices blow up the North Tower with saltpeter."

* * *

"A Basilisk?!"

* * *

"You-Know-Who did _WHAT_?!"

* * *

"Did… Did you just say a horde of Acromantulas and a dragon-rider attacked Hogwarts?"

"No, I said a horde of Acromantulas _with_ a dragon-rider attacked Hogwarts. The rider was an Acromantula too, you see?"

* * *

"Boggart can do _that?!_ "

* * *

"Oh, that's BRILLIANT! If only I could have seen old Snivellus's face!"

* * *

"Wait… Junior _Marauders_?"

"Why yes. You're talking to Lady Macbrains, Knight of the Order of the Junior Marauders."

"You don't understand — _I_ 'm a Marauder! A… _Senior_ Marauder, I guess, under those Weasleys' system. We… me, Harry's father, Remus and… the rat… we were the original four Marauders! Makers of the Marauder's Map!"

"Oh! That's interesting." Then Hermione had had a breakthrough. "Of course! _They_ 're the ones who've got the Map! That's why you couldn't find it!"

* * *

"The Map, m'lady?" said Grandmaster Fred. "We found it in our first year in Filch's office — but it disappeared last year."

"We suspected Sir Ronniekins," continued Grandmaster George, "but he swore on his honor as a Knight that he didn't have it either…"

"We're rather curious, in fact," said Fred again, "about precisely how you found out about the Map's existence."

"Mr Padfoot told me," answered Lady Macbrains. "Oh, and by the way, I think Mr Wormtail's the one who took the Map."

Lady Macbrains then bowed in goodbye to the aghast Grandmasters and headed towards the Third Floor Corridor, in the final chambers of which Sirius Black was beginning to set up a cozy little apartment for himself.

"Sooo," Hermione asked as Sirius finished sweeping the last few cobwebs into a corner, "…how did you find a wand?"

"Wand?" Sirius repeated absent-mindedly, staring at the wand he was holding. "Oh! Yes! Yes, when we were at school, we Marauders managed to get some spare wands which we hid in the Secret Classroom… just in case. That certainly came in handy. But…"

"Let me guess, the wand that would have been Pettigrew's was missing?"

"You said it." Sirius sighed. "Well, no use thinking about him now. Either he'll come back on his own, or we've really seen the last of him… I'm certainly not going to look for him. So! How do you like what I've done with this place?"

Hermione looked around and saw that the room that she had last seen coated in Kerbog the Acromantula's webs was now furnished like a comfortable muggle interior, complete with armchairs and what she assumed was Sirius's idea of a TV set, but really looked more like a clockwork fishbowl.

"Well, it's nice as far as interiors go, yes," she said slowly, "but how are you going to handle things if students challenging the Corridor actually come by? _Trespassers! Come sit by the fire! Have a cuppa!_ "

"Heheh!" Sirius snickered. "No, no, Macbrains. Watch."

Sirius waved his wand twice and the furniture suddenly came to life, growling and snarling. The ottoman scuttled towards her and opened a gigantic, toothy maw.

"Ah. I see." said Hermione.

The armchair was getting closer and closer.

"Uhm. I'm convinced, Sirius, you can call them off now… Sirius?"

A few more instants of angry furniture growling and Sirius called snapped his fingers, returning the room to normal in a howl of barking laughter.

"Come now, Hermione, can't a Marauder take a joke from another? Heheheh!"

"Oh, fine." granted Hermione. "What's in the next room, by the way? The one that used to contain a flock of pixies"

"I wouldn't try it," Sirius said slowly. "I enlisted Marauder Grandmasters Fred and George Weasley to prepare the traps in that one."

"Oh." Hermione said simply.

* * *

Weeks drifted by. After an Autumn and Winter rich in revelations, twists and turns, and perils, Hermione's life (and Hogwarts in general) had returned to its odd idea of normalcy — that was to say, the sort of normalcy that included saying hello to a giant goggle-wearing Basilisk at breakfast, dodging the pranks of a poltergeist and the unpleasantness of a bloody ghost, having tea with a half-giant every Saturday, teaching a shapeshifting being of concentrated fear how to be a human preteen, and visiting an escaped mass-murderer and professional Dark-Lord-keeper inside a veritable Corridor of Terrors he called home.

For the Easter Holidays, Hermione felt she owed it to her parents to spend the week at home. She bid farewell to her miscellaneous Hogwarts friends (an increasingly large category that, as of late, seemed to also include the Portrait version of McGonagall) and hopped onto the Hogwarts Express. When she got back home, her parents immediately drove her home, where she was finally able to join the young grass-snake mother who answered to the nickname of 'Nettle', the one who had made her nest in the compost heap of Mr and Mrs Dyson, the Grangers' neighbours.

{ _Nettle! I'm Hermione Granger! I'm back!_ } she called after climbing over the hedge between the Grangers' garden and the Dysons'.

The Dysons never minded — they were an elderly couple who only rarely tended to their garden these days, and as from a very young age Hermione had sneaked off onto their property, they had eventually settled on an agreement with the Grangers that their feisty little girl could do so whenever she wanted as long as Mr Granger mowed the lawn for them.

{ _Hermione Granger!_ } hissed Nettle in response, emerging from the Dysons' pond. { _It has been so, so long!_ }

{ _Are you well and well-fed?_ } asked Hermione conversationally after crouching near the edge of the pond.

{ _Yes, Hermione Granger,_ } answered Nettle, { _your parents have been good to me while you were away. They brought me many legs of frogs. The winter was warm enough, especially here._ }

{ _Your children have hatched, I suppose?_ } she asked, still remembering with fondness the twelve white eggs she had seen nearly a year ago.

{ _Sweet scales!_ } said Nettle with amusement, { _Yes, they have, so long ago, so long ago… Why must you always go so long? I will show them to you._ }

Nettle slid back into the water, the whole length of her barred body sinking under the murky surface, and she reemerged followed by twelve snakes half as long as she was, who were twitching with excitement at meeting the human girl they'd been told about by their mother so often in their first months of life.

{ _You are Hermione Granger?_ } asked the first one curiously — her voice was still what would have been described as stuttering in a human, hesitant, unsure, shy. She was young still, and not used to speaking much.

{ _Yes, little Nettle!_ } cooed Hermione. { _And do you have a name of your own too?_ }

{ _I do!_ } the little snake replied enthusiastically.

{ _We all do!_ } chorused her siblings, and they all stated their names at the same time, an unintelligible cacophony of short twitchy hisses.

{ _One at a time, children, one at a time,_ } Nettle told them gently.

By Hermione's reckoning, around a year old was equivalent to five in human terms, although the snakelets were much more independent than any five-year-old human could be. Either way, she found them quite adorable. People less familiar with serpents, of course, might have thought rather differently.

One by one, the children gave their names —they were neither human-style 'special' names, nor a word-based nickname like Nettle's, but instead short, meaningless Parseltongue syllables that each snakelet had found to his or her liking. _Tsh!_ _Sth!_ _S-s!_ _Ths!_ _Ts!_ and so on. Hermione committed each to memory, although at such short notice even she would have been hard pressed to tell all twelve kids apart.

The thing about snakes, really, was that they knew very little. Knowledge of basic language was about all that parents usually passed on to their children, and Hermione suspected magic might have something to do with even that much. For magic really was the only explanation Hermione had for the strange and wonderful thing that was snakes' sapience. She trusted muggle science enough to know their mere brains, unlike a human's, couldn't possibly be enough for complex thought to develop; a snake's mind was a function of their magic, of their soul, there was no other way. A snake was born as stupid as the next animal, but if it was placed in mentally stimulating circumstances — such as a mother who was herself educated — then, why then its mind would grow and blossom into something like a human's.

Thus, snake intelligence being in essence a happy accident, snakes didn't have a society like humans or goblins or even gargoyles. They had little culture at all, and frighteningly few concepts of education.

Hermione, being Hermione, could never let such a thing slide. To snakes everywhere, she had always been an educator as much as a friend — and they were always eager to learn, at least once they'd gotten a taste of it (the wilder ones she always had to befriend through offers of food before anything else). She always cherished the look in snakes' eyes when they learned such simple things as what the Sun and stars really were, how the Earth was really a big ball of stone, or why exactly water went all hard and rocky in the winter sometimes.

And thus teach she did to Tsh and her eleven siblings, and also to Nettle, who could never learn enough even if she'd grown unusually educated over her short six years of life thanks to Hermione's companionship. The one thing she (nor the Basilisk, nor Kaiser, nor any other snake) never got a hang of was English. Snakes couldn't possibly pronounce it to any meaningful degree, and Hermione supposed that the sounds of it were therefore just too alien for their young minds to ever fully accept as words. If only she could learn techniques to teach people who were born mute how to understand spoken language… oh, but even that wasn't a right analogy, because mute humans didn't have a wholly different sort of language to occupy the part of their brain devoted to communication…

Oh well. Now she was telling the eager youths about rainbows. Their hisses of admiration were music to the girl's ears.


	15. The Dementors

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Merry Christmas! The legacy of unexpected and hopefully entertaining insanity left by the dragon-riding spiders of Chapter Nine is well-honored indeed in this one, but ah, I will say no more. As always, thanks to all those who Favorited, Followed or Reviewed! And please continue to do so in the future!_

 **Chapter XIV: The Dementors**

On the way back to Hogwarts aboard the _Express_ , Hermione was rereading Adalbert Waffling's _Magical Theory_ for the sixth time, double-checking everything in the book with her notes from Professors McGonagall, Flitwick and Max's lessons. She had a compartment to herself, and was now pondering a particular statement of Professor Max regarding the Killing Curse, Wilkins's Theorem of Soul Magic, the Basilisk's Gaze, and how these three things fit with one another.

So plunged was she into her reflection, that she barely noticed when the Express slowed down to a stop. She did, however, take notice when the temperature around her dropped in an instant. And she most definitely noticed when the door to her compartment magically slid aside to reveal a towering figure dressed in a ragged, flowing back cloak, its face hidden beneath a hood. A Dementor.

She was feeling very grumpy all of a sudden. Really grumpy.

"What do you want?" she snapped.

The Dementor's raspy breath missed a beat; the effect was rather like a grunt or a gasp.

"Yes?" Hermione insisted in an angry, commanding, non-nonsense voice. "I'm very busy. State your business, or go! Come on!"

The Dementor hesitated for a moment more, and then Hermione felt its answer. It wasn't really talking, no words had been spoken — the creature had somehow sent her the thought, the _concept_ of its answer.

It was looking for Sirius Black.

If she hadn't been in such a bad mood, Hermione Granger would have been thrilled to find out Dementors communicated telepathically. But instead, she replied bitingly:

"Well, unless you Dementors are a lot more moronic than I imagined, you ought to realize I am _not_ Sirius Black. _Go away._ "

Another wordless statement found its way inside her mind.

The Dementor wanted her to tell him if she _knew_ anything about Sirius Black.

"I… I don't know anything about Sirius Black," she said, still angry but also suddenly insecure, anxious, worried.

Now, another thing Hermione Granger might have realized if she'd been in her right mind was that if the Dementor could get inside her mind to communicate, it stood to reason that it could read her thoughts as well.

And at the forefront of her thoughts, at that moment, was the fact that she knew Sirius Black personally, and that she had a very good idea where to find him, and that she desperately hoped she could hide this well enough.

 _Come_ , ordered the Dementor inside her mind.

"I won't! I-I wont!" the girl resisted.

 _Come._

"N-I-Where!?"

 _COME._

Her mind felt — open. Bare. Violated, almost. She could _feel_ the Dementor's mind forcing its way into her own, trying to read her memories and take control of her will. And also, the remaining rational part of her mind assumed, intent on consuming a happy memory or two while it was at it.

She remembered — how alone she was at school, the pressure of keeping her secrets, that time she'd sprained her ankle when she was eight, her sadness when Grand-daddy Willy had died, when the old adder in the Granger garden had died — she —

This was the Dementor's doing. _It_ was causing the flashbacks, distracting her, trying to break her.

 _No you don't._

She resisted. She pushed her will back to the foremost of her mind, pushed it right up front against the Dementor's. Pushing back.

 _No. You. Don't. Get. OUT._

 _COME. SURRENDER._

 _No._

 _COME._

 _NO!_

Flashes of sadness and pain and cold rung through her mind, the poisonous thoughts induced by the demon. She tried to ignore them.

 _Get out! I won't!_

 _YOU MUST. YOU CANNOT WIN._

 _GET OUT!_

She was getting nowhere! She _was_ going to lose this… of course she was, concurred that laid-back, rationalist inside voice of hers, if casual willpower could fight off Dementors they wouldn't be much use against hardened Dark Wizards… Now of course that hopelessness, that was surely induced by the Dementor too rather than her own feelings, but that only went to show just how overpowered the wraith was compared to her…

She was losing this.

 _Get… out!… OUT!…_

She was losing. The Dementor drew closer and closer.

Somewhere in the sea of hopelessness and cold, Hermione smelled something oddly familiar.

Sugar. No, candy — and not any candy. It was pumpkin pastries. Hermione was oddly sure of that.

 _Why?_ the rational side of Hermione wondered. _Why would I spell pumpkin pastries in this situation? I rather like pumpkin pastries. They're not a sad memory at all._

This little glint of curiosity allowed her to regain just a hint more will, and she opened her eyes. Out the corner of her eyes, right behind the Dementor, was that nice trolley lady Hermione had seen and bought candy from on her previous trips on the Express.

"Hello dear," said the trolley lady sweetly. "Anything from the trolley?"

Hermione gasped for breath in the cold of the Dementor's aura. She couldn't speak.

The Dementor turned round, looked at the Trolley Witch, and grunted.

"Oh," said the Witch with a pouting face. " _Another one_. Will you be staying along for the ride… sir?"

" _Hrrrr_ ", replied the Dementor — but Hermione, who was gathering her wits now that the fiend was no longer focusing its power on her, assumed it had just sent its answer to the Witch.

"Take her away?" gasped the Trolley Witch before suddenly growing serious. "I'm afraid I can't allow that."

" _Hrrr._ "

"Because his train. DOES NOT. LIKE. PEOPLE. GETTING. _OFF. IT_ ", intoned the Witch, and her hair grew wild and her fingers sharpened into spikes.

The Dementor recoiled.

Hermione was looking at all of this with the mildly curious detachment of someone half asleep from a hangover and observing a particularly curious fever dream.

Hissing and rasping, the Dementor waved its arms in sweeping motions, and sucked in air and warmth from the Trolley Witch, working its evil magic on her.

The Witch seemed to waver for just the faintest instant but instantly recovered all her resolve and slashed at the Dementor with her claws. They shredded the outer layer of the cloak but hit the Dementor's body with a loud clunk, leaving it as unblemished as if it were made of stone — or, rather, incredibly thick ice.

"Oh my," the Trolley Witch said with the air of a granny noticing her dog had spilled his plate.

Her right hand morphed back into a normal human hand and plunged into her pocket, from which she withdrew a long, ancient-looking copper-plated wand.

"Well, I suppose one must do what one must," the Trolley Witch whispered.

The Dementor glided back an inch or two, holding its breath in surprise.

"How did it go again?" she muttered. "Oh yes — _Expecto Patronum!_ "

A blinding white light erupted from the Witch's wand, warm and healthy and _good_. The entire compartment — no, the entire _train_ pulsed with the heavenly glow.

The Dementor's rasp turned to an ear-splitting shriek. Its gnarled hand were shaking, it was clawing at its hooded face as if in singing pain.

The light had intensified; and though the Hogwarts Express was still stopped in its tracks, an intense clamor of wheels, steam engines and toots rose from every part of the train, and from the light materialized the ethereal shape, bursting with life and energy — of a steam-powered locomotive.

It was only a seventh of the size of the real Hogwarts Express's engine, but no less powerful, that much was obvious. Hermione wasn't entirely sure _what_ that was, but the ghost-train jumped to life. It rammed into the quivering Dementor and knocked it cleanly through the window of the Express.

Hermione suddenly became aware that the train had stopped while on top of a rather tall bridge. The Dementor hovered for an instant in mid-air, as if groggily realizing where it was; it waved its cloaked arms, fruitlessly trying to pull itself back upwards, as it slowly, unavoidably began its descent to the ground.

Meanwhile, the ghost-engine bolted down the corridor, and grunts and shrieks echoing through the train showed quite plainly that there were other Dementors on this train, and it was kicking them out one by one in exactly the same way as the first one. The Trolley Witch followed after her silvery creation, leaving Hermione, still in a bit of a daze, to gaze through the window of the Express at the dozens of Dementors slowly drifting towards the murky depths like a host of ghastly, oversized balloons.

A few managed to swirl on themselves and fly back in, of course, but they were immediately blasted back out by the magical train-thing; and this would go on once, twice, three times, until the Dementor was too battered to fly properly and accepted its downwardly fate.

Finally, the last of the dark things was banished from the train. As quickly as it had appeared, the silvery glow was reabsorbed into the walls of the Express, along with the ghostly train that had sprung from it. The shattered windows all repaired themselves as one, and a moment later the train was back to normal. Somewhere down the corridor Hermione heard the little steps of the Trolley Lady and her chirpy granny voice once again advertising pumpkin pastries to the other students.

"That was weird," thought Hermione, shaking off her remaining confusion and getting back into _Magical Theory._

* * *

The Dementors had slowed down the Express long enough that once the students had arrived at Hogwarts, they barely had time to put their trunks back in their dormitories before it was time for dinner in the Great Hall. Hermione sat down next to Harry and Ron as was her habit, opposite Maximilian and not far from Neville, Sally-Anne and Seamus. The Weasley Twins waved at them from the other end of the Gryffindor table and then resumed charming their sausages to dance and their soup to fly out of the pot in the form of a large green bubble.

"Well then!" she said cheerfully. "Nice to see you two again! How were your holidays?"

Harry was the first to answer; he'd been a little lonely without either Ron or Hermione, but he _did_ have Maximilian, and Kaiser — although the latter was far from the most captivating conversationalist, being utterly uninterested in matters that did not concern his own wellbeing. Like all the other students who had stayed in Hogwarts for Easter, he'd also received a large serving of chocolate, delivered by House-Elves; he'd have kept a bit of it for Ron and Hermione, but Maximilian had greedily gulped down his entire share and then demanded Harry give him his leftovers. (Worryingly, the Boggart had also eaten the wrappings.)

Ron's vacation was substantially merrier, although he did have to deal with a lot of housework ordained by his kindly but somewhat overbearing mother. Ginny and the Twins had teamed up in a 'research project' of finding out just how much chocolate a garden gnome could eat, and that meant that fortunately, neither were too concerned with throwing hexes around or organizing pranks (respectively). Although he'd spent most of his time simply letting off steam and gorging himself on chocolate, he'd also, on Hermione's advice, begun to look around Ottery St. Catchpole for some resident snakes he might try and socialize with. This search, had, however, been unsuccessful so far — which Ron attributed, not too seriously, to what unbearable neighbours Garden Gnomes and Weasleys were.

Overall things were fine and ordinary, and the food was warm, and Hermione had nearly put the utter insanity of the events on the Hogwarts Express when Professor Dumbledore called for the hall's attention and said in a magically magnified voice:

"To whomever may be listening! I must warn you of a fact that may frighten you, but is, I'm sad to say, perfectly normal. Following the escape of Sirius Black, and on the assumption that he might try to infiltrate Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic has dispatched a legion of the Dementors of Azkaban to… guard… the Hogwarts Grounds,… until such a time as Sirius Black has been apprehended."

Gasps and whispers were heard throughout the halls from the wizard-raised, and the muggle-born who did not know what Dementors were soon joined in after their classmates explained it to them.

"It is of _course_ common knowledge that the Dementors are loyal to the Ministry of Magic and would never dream of harming an innocent… that may be the common knowledge, yes, but I would still advise you to avoid these… guardians of the peace… whenever possible; and of course, should any of them behave at all uncouthly, you are to immediately report the fact to me, and to your parents, and to the Auror Division, and generally to make as much of a fuss as you wish.

Now, the Dementors ought to be here already; they were meant to board the Express _en route_ , I am told, and arrive here with those of us who had returned home for the holiday. I…"

The doors of the Great Hall flung open to reveal a Dementor of extraordinary size (the one Hermione had seen up close was about two meters tall, give or take, but that one was easily three and a half, possibly four). Its cloak looked soaked; it clung to its skeletal body oddly, as if partially frozen. And had it had any eyes, they would surely have been glowing an angry red, for that Dementor was positively _seething_.

Leaving a trail of mist in its wake, the wraith glided at an impressive speed down the Hall under the stares of the various students, petrified with fear to the very last one.

Dumbledore rose from his throne-like chair, brow furrowed, wand out. The other teachers had also laid their forks down and gripped their wands — all but Professor Max and Hagrid, who were both watching the phantom with a kind of awed fascination.

"What do you want, Dementor?" he asked in a calm but commanding voice.

The lengthy vocalization that met his query sounded very much like a _snarl_ , unseen though the Dementor's expression may have been.

Dumbledore stroked his beard nervously, although his face remained stern and confident.

"I'm afraid the Hogwarts Express, despite its name, and essential though it may be to the school, is _not_ under my direct control. It is pointless to blame the action of its keeper on me. And now it is my turn to complain — you have entered into this hall without warning, despite my express interdiction for your sorry kind to breach these sacred walls. Leave _now_ — or endure the wrath of a Grand Sorcerer's Patronus."

The Dementor wavered, hissing its discontent.

" _Leave._ " repeated the Headmaster, raising his wand threateningly.

After clawing futilely at the air in spite, the wraith bowed quickly to the Headmaster and left just as briskly as it had come. As soon as it had left the Great Hall, Professor Flitwick performed some sort of charm that lifted the mist it had left behind, and the dreary atmosphere that had set down was lifted also.

"I'm very sorry for this slight misunderstanding," said Dumbledore after a few moments, "between I and one who, _I have no doubt,_ shall become a well-liked beacon of justice and security in the halls of Hogwarts. You may return to your hard-earned meals."

Harry had been shaken quite badly by the Dementor's presence, compared to Ron and Hermione who had already seen them during the train ride, and the two tried to comfort him, doing their best to describe the amusing spectacle of Dementors falling to a watery doom. Maximilian, meanwhile, had watched the Dementor closely for the entire length of its presence. Once Harry was back to his normal outgoing self, Hermione asked her Boggart friend what had interested him so.

"Well, Hermione," answered the pretend-human, "I was observing it the way I would as a Boggart, rather than using my human eyes… you see? Trying to figure out how it's put together. It's more alike to me than any other creature I've met — like mine, its body is not really a body at all, more like… like solidified magic coating its soul. Although I doubt it can shapeshift at all, its flesh, if you can call it that, seems to be made of an incredibly strong, stiff material that is positively _brimming_ with power. And its soul itself… _there_ is an odd mind indeed. I could only have an outer look, of course, from where I stand, not an in-depth analysis, but it's not put together at all like a human's… again I would say it's more like mine — it's a predatory thing, designed for its owner to channel it and send… _tendrils_ of it onwards to suck in wisps of other beings' souls or penetrate them. A wizard's soul can be bent in such a manner, I believe, but it comes naturally to a Boggart — and, as far as I can tell, is the very _core_ of the way a Dementor perceives the world. It's fascinating, really. If only I could replicate this ability…!"

Hermione stared at Maximilian's face beginning to get bonier, at his eyes sinking ever so slightly in their sockets —

{ _Not now! Not here…!_ } she scolded in Parseltongue, so that only her two friends already in on the secret could hear. { _You'd give yourself away, not to mention scare everyone senseless!_ }

{ _Sorry!_ } apologized the Boggart in the same language, immediately canceling the changes he had already made to his body and slurping down his bowl of soup so as to further cement his humanity to onlookers.

* * *

After lunch, she passed Filch in the hallways and made her way to the Chamber of Secrets, where she found the Basilisk fast asleep — which was presumably why she hadn't shown up at dinner. Deciding it wouldn't be kind of her to wake her friend up just to say hello, she decided to wait until the next day to tell her about the Dementors and about her holiday.

Her next destination was the Third Floor Corridor; once in the first Chamber, she merely fished around her pockets for a blue marble Sirius had given her on Dumbledore's behalf, and tapped it twice. The Portkey worked its magic and she was instantly transported to Sirius's chambers.

"Good evening, Sirius!" she began immediately, catching the surprised fugitive in an evening robe and slippers, gulping down a glass of firewhisky.

"Ah, oh, hello, Hermione!" Sirius greeted, surprised, putting down his glass. "How've you been?"

"Alright, for the most part," she answered, "except for the fact that I was attacked by a Dementor on the train, but you know."

"You _what_?" said Sirius, paling.

"Dumbledore did tell you, I suppose," Hermione said, "that the Ministry had decided to send out a bunch of soul-sucking phantoms in a school, to look for you?"

"Yes, yes, he did…" grumbled the wizard,"…blast all these lobsters."

"—Lobsters?" repeated Hermione in confusion.

"Ah, you wouldn't get it," Sirius said dismissively, "…old Marauder in-joke… Go on."

"Well," she explained, "the Dementors decided that, first, you might be hiding on the Express, and secondly, they didn't want to bother with gliding to Hogwarts on their own, so instead they decided to board the train halfway through and begin 'interrogating' the students."

"Dementors? Attacking _kids_?!" yelled Sirius in outrage. "MY WAND! Why I'll Patronus them back to Azkaban! I'll burn them to a crisp! I'll turn their robes into _marshmallow!_ "

"No, no, Sirius, it's okay…" Hermione tried to calm her adult friend's volatile emotions. "They didn't hurt me, anyway, the Trolley Witch intervened and kicked them out of the train. They weren't very happy about _that_ when they did get to Hogwarts, but it was a good laugh at the time… oh, you should have _been_ there. And besides, when the Dementors tried actually coming inside the castle, Professor Dumbledore sent"

"Ah…" Sirius mellowed down. "Yes, we'll have to see if we can get Dumbledore to let you use his Pensieve so you can show me the Trolley Witch's booting of the creatures. I and the other Marauders know full well how hilariously ferocious that old lady can be! Why one time in our Fourth Year—"

"—wait, I'll be glad to hear that story, and Harry and Ron too I'm sure, I ought to go get them — but what's a Pensieve?"

"Well, that's…"


	16. Second Year Finale

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Finally, we have Second Year wrapped up! The Curse being what it is, I'm afraid we'll have to say good-bye to Professor Alexander Max in this chapter… and to the Dementors, but I don't suppose anyone will miss them very much. Again thanks to all reviewers, favers and followers. _

**Chapter XV: Second Year Finale**

"Hermione, you've _got_ to help us."

Harry had said this with a very urgent air that didn't seem very consistent with Harry and Ron's usual attitude when it came to schoolwork. They never turned in their homework _late_ , but they'd do it at the last possible minute, with an aloof air that would never betray they'd stolen half of it from Hermione's notes.

In short, the girl quickly deduced that her two best human friends had a very different reason than usual to ask for her help.

"Of course, Harry," she asked. "What is it?"

It was Ron who explained what the matter was:

"Just being around you must have rubbed off on the Dementors, Hermione, because, well, they've realized that while they can't get inside the _castle_ , there's nothing stopping them from sneaking up on people at Quidditch practice — the Quidditch pitch isn't _inside_ , see?"

"And that's just awful!" Harry concurred. "Now you try flying your best with monstrosities sneaking up on you in the middle of a game and gulping down all your excitement!"

"At this rate we'll lose the Quidditch Cup to those Slytherin gits, I swear!" lamented the red-head.

"But why would the Dementors be worse on your team than on the Slytherin's, Ron?" she asked, nonplussed.

"I'm sure they're doing a number on the Slytherins too," Ron said, snickering faintly, "that's always a small relief, but we're not going against them now, that's really the thing. Don't expect you to pay much mind to it, but the only match the Slytherins have a head now is against Hufflepuff, in may. An easy win for them — Malfoy — he's their Seeker this year — Malfoy's a much better flyer than the current Hufflepuff seeker, Martin McGonagall. Apparently the bloke is our McGonagall's nephew, but he's still a rotten flyer. Bet they'll replace him by next year. Point is, even with Dementors on the pitch, it'll be an easy win for Slytherin, and they've already won against Ravenclaw. We Gryffindors've won against Hufflepuff too, and we beat Malfoy's sorry lot in September — hell, you were there — but that means we have equal scores. It all… dammit, I can only think of the Parseltongue word now, you and your lessons — it all { _hinges_ } on the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match, three weeks from now. "

"Oh." Hermione said, trying to absorb all this information. "Then the Ravenclaw team is a threat?

"Well," answered Ron, "the 'claws themselves aren't _that_ good, but…"

"—but," completed Harry, "for some reason, the Dementors seem to want to attack _me_ in particular whenever I get near them."

"Do they now?" she said. "Ah, well, don't worry. They might be fascinating to Maximilian, but I don't particularly appreciate the Dementors' company, either."

Hermione set down _The Life, Social Habits and Weaknesses of Phantom Abominations_ , by Merwyn J. Yaxley, and flashed them a grin that would have been immensely more at home on the face of a deranged Death Eater who'd just found a foolproof way to murder Dumbledore.

"I will think of something."

* * *

"Hermione," Ron said accusingly, "it's been four days, the match with Slytherin is in three weeks and we can't practice with the Dementors around — _have_ you found something yet, for Merlin's sake?"

"Oh yes," answered Hermione with a sly smile, "in fact, the first phase of my plan will be enacted today during Professor Max's lesson."

Taken aback, Ron nodded, thanked her, assured her she was a 'ruddy brilliant friend', and went on his way.

* * *

"Wait," said Ron as the students began forming a line in front of a (hopefully non-sapient) animate Dementor dummy. "So your cunning plan is to _ask a teacher_?"

"It's perfectly sound plan." Hermione whispered back. "What did you expect?"

"Oh, I don't know," answered Harry, "something actually helpful from _you_."

"Yeah. Something like a loophole, or a muggle trick, or—"

But Ron's recriminations were cut off by Professor Max.

"Well _then…_ students," said the ghoulish instructor, "it would… _appear_! That I have been _required_ by a certain… member… of your ranks, to teach you the best way! To defend! Yourself! Against! _A Dementor!_ "

As usual, Max had punctuated his introduction by lurching at random student, wand first, crazy-eyed. Most people had gotten used to this sort of thing by then (even Neville seemed to be getting over it), but it still gave one quite a start.

" _Can_ anyone tell me what that is?" asked the Professor.

Hermione answered instantly:

"My research indicates that it is a very powerful spell known as the Patronus Charm, sir. I say 'known', because it isn't properly a Charm, as…"

"Yes, yes," Max cut her off, "then ten _points to Gryffindor_! Well then! It _is_ the Patronus Charm! …Unless you know _Fiendfyre_ … but that's a wholly different story. And _how_ … does one… _cast_ a Patronus Charm? …Not you, Miss Granger, this time."

No one raised hands.

" _Youth these days._ " muttered Max. "No _enthusiasm_ , no _drive_ , unless their name is Granger. Even with real Dementors breathing down their _necks_! Hah. Well, the _way_ to _cast_ a _Patronus_ … is to _focus…_ on a happy memory. Then you perform the wand motion, like this —" he twirled his wand in a nearly complete circle "— and you call out: _Expecto Patronum!_ The _key…_ is to keep your concentration on the memory _while also_ thinking about the spell. Not everyone manages it, let me warn you. _Or_ they'll only get a _mist_ … when they should get a fully _corporeal_ guardian. Now, you never really can tell if it's because they're not _happy_ enough… or not _concentrated_ enough… that's the problem with teaching the Patronus Charm."

Hermione was looking at the Professor curiously, wondering what he was getting at.

" _Therefore…_ " began Max in a very creepy way.

Harry, Hermione and Ron all came away from the lesson able to cast Patronuses (in the shapes of a stag, an otter and a terrier respectively), and still giggling at random from the Cheering Charms Professor Max had used to get them into the proper mindset.

"Well, gentlemen," Hermione stated amidst her chuckles and chortlings, "I think it's time for some recreational Dementor-hunting."

* * *

Their third target of the afternoon was a duo of Dementors who were patrolling by the Lake, hissing angrily at all who came nearby. Harry's stag was the most impressive of the Patronuses, but unfortunately the Dementors usually spotted it from afar and fled, which ruined the fun. Thus, Hermione sent her otter after those two instead. Taking advantage of its amphibian nature, the silvery animal dove into the Lake a good distance away from the Dementors before leaping out of the water when they least expected it. One of the Dementors, slightly smaller than its fellow, was bitten at the wrist by the ghostly creature of concentrated heroism and yelped. The other one tried to distance itself from it, presumably trying to spot the wizard responsible for the attack, but its blind search was interrupted by Hermione's otter pouncing onto its head and scratching at its hooded face with the aggressiveness of an angry alley cat.

The three friends were all having a good laugh about it from under Harry's Invisibility Coak (the only one missing was Maximilian, who, they'd discovered, wasn't very comfortable around Patronuses).

Just as the first Dementor lost its balance and tripped into the lake in great splashes that were already partially freezing around it (a spectacle that was absolutely hilarious to the three onlookers), they felt the Invisibility Cloak being yanked off of them.

They turned round immediately to find Professor Snape standing there, wand held out, holding the Cloak in his other hand.

"Well, well, well," said the Professor. "Attacking certified Ministry employees, are we now, Mr Potter, Mr Weasley… and, ah… Miss Granger…"

"Who did what now?" said Hermione as innocently as possible.

"I beg you pardon?" the Professor said, taken aback.

"I think", she'll explained, "that you'll have great difficulty proving that anybody here did any such thing."

The Potions Master looked around to see that the otter had vanished. The first Dementor was still just a black mass more or less visible beneath the water, desperately trying to swim up but its every motion dragged down by its robes. As for the second, it had wisely glided away while its attackers were distracted.

"That may be," conceded Snape, "but that does not explain why you were _sneaking about_ under the cover of an Invisibility Cloak."

"It's very fashionable this spring," said Harry. "You should try it, I assure you it'd make you look a _lot_ better."

"A lot better, _sir_ , Potter," corrected the fuming Snape.

"I think you mean Sir Scarhead," Hermione stepped in, "not Sir Potter. As he is a knight, it is indeed proper that you should address Harry as 'Sir', but then you ought to —"

"ENOUGH!" bellowed the Head of Slytherin. "Ten points from Gryffindor for your cheek! _Each_!"

"Oooh!" Ron added. "So many at once? You must be _really_ angry then! Too bad we don't care!"

"WHY YOU-!" screamed the Professor. "Very well! I'll give you _detention_ , then!"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Professor," Hermione said calmly.

"And _why not_ , pray tell?" glowered Snape.

"Well…" she began. "Being locked in a room with three of us? Do you really believe you'd survive that?"

Snape's right eye was _twitching_.

"Professor," Hermione said seriously, "I really don't understand you. You're supposed to be a Slytherin. Cunning, scheming, manipulative. This would imply a good understanding of people and the lengths they are willing to go to for any given reason. So why won't you see that _we will not permit anyone attempting to bully us_. That not only isn't it going to work, but it's going to become a safety hazard for the bully _very, very quickly_ if they don't comprehend this _simple truth_. I took valuable time and energy to make it clear to you that you're out of your league _once_ already. Your prized pupil, Malfoy — _he_ has understood it perfectly by now. Why can't you?"

Snape's face went through several colors and his entire body twitched like a malfunctioning robot over the course of Hermione's improvised little speech, especially when she snatched the Invisibility Cloak back from his grip. However, the Professor managed to collect himself in a few moments once it was over.

" _If it weren't for me, not one of you ungrateful little brats would be alive!_ " he hissed through closed teeth before taking flight.

Flight.

The three children stared.

"He's… he's not _really_ half-bat, is he?" Ron asked nervously as the scowling Snape flew back into the castle.

* * *

Thanks to Ron and Hermione's Patronuses standing guard, the Dementors were unable to disturb either the Quidditch practice of the Gryffindor Team, or the final match they played against Ravenclaw, which Gryffindor won, naturally. The Quidditch Cup was all set to join the House Cup on the Gryffindors' mantle this year.

* * *

"Miss Granger," Dumbledore explained while nibbling on a piece of chocolate, "I know you must be very busy revising for your examinations next week, but I asked you to come in the hope that you would have one of your brilliant schemes. I will come straight to the point. How do you propose that we drive the Dementors away from Hogwarts?"

"A lot of Patronuses seems like the obvious way," Hermione said sheepishly.

"Of course," chuckled Dumbledore, "but the Ministry would only send more of them back…"

"I _would_ suggest Petrifying them," Hermione thought aloud, "but apparently they don't have _eyes_ , which would make that rather difficult. You wouldn't happen to know of a way to make a Dementor grow eyeballs, would you, Professor?"

"None that would affect a Dementor's spectral body, I'm afraid," the old wizard said mournfully.

"What about removing the reason they're here in the first place, then?" suggested the girl. "What if Sirius Black was sighted in Panama, or, or better yet — what if we had him fake his own death?"

"Ahah! An intriguing proposition to be sure!" congratulated Dumbledore. "And how would you enact such a scheme?"

"I'll think of something this week-end, Professor," she said. "Oh, by the way, you wouldn't happen to know how to fly?"

"I can handle myself on a broomstick, Miss Granger," replied the old alchemist, "but I trust that is not what you refer to. This is about Severus, is it not?"

Hermione nodded.

"Yes…" Dumbledore said gravely. "Severus Snape is many things, you know, Miss Granger, but he is not a liar, or at least he does not lie gratuitously. I believe he was quite correct to tell you he was essential to your continued survival. You see — and I have not told many people this, but you already know more sensitive information in your own way than many of my closest friends and allies — towards the end of the Wizarding War, a Death Eater realized the error of his ways and came to me for help and forgiveness. Over the following two years, that turncoat Death Eater became a spy, at great personal risk. He brought me and other opponents of Voldemort much information, which saved many lives… including that of Molly Prewett… and event those of James and Lily Potter, for a time… and as for you, it is very possible that Lord Voldemort would have won the war without this information, and to be blunt, I would not have put much stock in the life expectancy of a muggle-born girl in those days. As you can guess, that Death Eater was Severus Snape. He may be bitter, unpleasant, a bully perhaps, but you and Britain at large nonetheless owe a great deal to Professor Snape."

"Well, he owes _me_ too, by this sort of logic," objected Hermione. "I and my friends did prevent the Turban from coming back to life, and I don't think a former turncoat who helped bring about his defeat the first time around would have survived very long with him once again at large. And I won't even go into the whole Acromantula business."

"You may be right," Dumbledore said thoughtfully, "maybe that debt _has_ technically been repaid… although I would still treat Severus with relative respect, if I were you. Either way, as for unsupported flight as you have seen Severus foolhardily perform in plain sight the other day, I am quite incapable of it — it is a technique long thought impossible, which Tom Riddle perfected and kept jealously to himself… or so I thought, before Severus came to me and told me 'his Lord' had taught him the secret. But he could not tell me, or anyone else, because Tom Riddle is no fool — he exacted an unbreakable magical oath of secrecy from Snape in exchange for the secret itself."

"Ah," said Hermione, "I see. Well, I'll try to see if I can loophole the secret out of him someday, when I have more time…"

"A worthy endeavor," said Dumbledore, "but pray, do not spread yourself too thin at so young an age, do not neglect what is truly important… it is a mistake I know only too well."

"Oh yes," she realized with a start, "this all started with the Dementor problem, didn't it? Let me see, how _could_ Sirius fake his death?"

"Miss Granger," began the Headmaster, "that is not exactly what I m—"

"Ahem!" the Sorting Hat made its presence known. "I believe I may have a suggestion."

* * *

It took some time to set up, but a plan was worked out. The final week of exams passed just like the one of the year before (almost everything was laughably easy for Hermione and quite manageable for all her friends). On Friday afternoon, Maximilian was suddenly taken ill and escorted by responsible student Fred Weasley to the Hospital Wing.

At dinner, just as Professor Max (in whose class it had occurred) was discussing the event with Madam Pomfrey (who hadn't seen so much as Maximilian's hat), Sirius Black rushed into the Great Hall.

He was dark, disheveled and bloodthirsty. His beard had grown long and dirty, his robes were looking rather like a Dementor, albeit adorned with blood-red trimmings. His eyes were bloodshot and yellow, and even though he wasn't smiling, the corners of his mouth seemed ready to coil up into a diabolic grin at a moment's notice. He was holding up a long, gnarled black wand.

" _NO ONE MOVE OR I'LL BLOW UP THIS CASTLE LIKE I BLEW UP THAT STREET!_ " screamed Black suddenly.

Because she was looking for it, Hermione saw Dumbledore whispering in Filch's ear to dissuade him from calling the Dementors. Most everyone, however, was staring at the monologuing Black.

" _VERY WELL!_ " the escaped, deranged Death Eater was screaming. " _YOU GOT ME! I WAS IN THE CASTLE! I KNOW I CAN'T HOPE TO ESCAPE! BUT THE DEMENTORS WON'T HAVE ME ALIVE, NOT AGAIN! HAHAHAH! **EXPLODIS SUICIDIS MAXIMA!**_ "

With these last few words — which were really the incantation of a dark curse — Black's body exploded into confetti that quickly vanished themselves.

The frightened students stared around the Hall, making sure there truly was no trace left of Sirius Black. When they were truly certain, there was an uncertain but rising cheer that was soon silenced by Professor Dumbledore. He made a very well-made little 'improvised' speech where he told them how sorry he was that they had had to witness this terrible event, but added that at least it looked like the Sirius Black problem was taken care of; he concluded by noting that, sadly, they would therefore have to part with the Dementors' company in the coming year, as their talents would be needed elsewhere.

In the general confusion, no one noticed a certain second-year Gryffindor boy reforming out of ash and smoke in a dark corner and going over to his seat, where two other boys and a girl hissed compliments at his extraordinary dramatic performance.

* * *

It was nearly nine in the evening on the last day of school, and excited whispers were spreading through the school. Not about the dramatic death of Sirius Black, not anymore — there was only so much you could _say_ about such a clear-cut event before you ran out of opinions to share — but rather about the fact that Professor Alexander S. Max, the Defence Professor, had eaten his dinner with gusto and had retired to his office, perfectly healthy, with no sign at all of wanting to quit or anything of that nature.

Could it be, wondered Hermione along with the rest of Hogwarts, that the Curse on the Defence Professorship had finally run its course? Were they stuck with Professor Max for the years to come?

Intent on discussing the matter with people more knowledgeable about Hogwarts than her, she got the Bored Boar to let her into the Headmaster's Office to interrogate the Sorting Hat. Halfway through the stairs, however, she overheard the distinct rasp of Professor Max pleading Professor Dumbledore, coming from inside the office.

"Do they _really_ have to go, Albus?" he was saying. "I would consider it a _personal favor_ — oh, do let them stay a while longer, do, I couldn't bear to part with them so soon — such wonderfully wretched creatures, there's so much to learn from them!"

"I understand your academic interest, Alexander," the Headmaster's voice replied sternly, "but I cannot jeopardize the safety of my students' _souls_ for the sake of a _monogram_."

"Albus, I warn you, if they're going, then _so am I_!"

"To Azkaban, you mean? _Willingly?!_ "

"Where _else_ would I find Dementors to observe?"

"Well, I strongly advise against it, Alexander, but it is _your_ soul you are recklessly endangering this time. I cannot restrain you. Go, if that is your choice."

" _Farewell_!"

No, Hermione thought as she quickly walked back to the Gryffindor Dormitories to pack up her trunk, things were still true to form. As she said good-bye to her Boggart, Portrait, Serpent and Wizard friends for the summer, she idly wondered what the next year would hold.


	17. Summer Interlude II

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Another very short but hopefully-amusing Summer Interlude! Let's make this a tradition between each year, shall we? Anyway, I will be back shortly with an actual chapter._

 _ **Summer Interlude II: The Sequel**_

" _Boy_ ," Vernon Dursley began as Harry climbed into the car, "if you think you can pull the same little trick you did last summer with that scaly monster of yours, I've looked this up, little freak — kraits are illegal to own if you don't have a permit — I'll have that thing _put_ _down_ , you hear me?"

"By the police, you mean, uncle Vernon?" Harry asked, absent-mindedly stroking Kaiser's head.

" _Of course_ , by the police!" replied the walrus. "Don't they teach you anything useful at that freak-school of yours?"

"You _are_ aware, uncle Vernon," Harry said in his best Hermione impression, "that, as I am very much underage, should you report any illegal actions on my part, my guardians would be held legally responsible?"

Mr Dursley almost swallowed his mustache, and stayed silent for the rest of the way.

Harry, meanwhile, was explaining what he'd just said to Kaiser. Kaiser was happy that the muggle-peace-guardian-people weren't going to be bothering him, but did not really grasp the humor of the situation.

Kaiser was not very keen on higher thinking, in general. With snakes like him, one could see where the muggle misconception of serpents as mere animals had come from. But he did do his job well.

Very well.

As the Dursley car pulled into Privet Drive, Harry smiled at the thought of once again hearing Dudley's delightful _squeals_ of fright. Hagrid had been right, two years ago, they were almost exactly like a pig's.


	18. New Classes, New Faces

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Well then! Like all first Chapters in a year, this is more exposition than anything else, but I hope it will nonetheless be entertaining to you! While I have your attention here, by the way, I recommend you give "The Fight of Rights", by Alma Lannister, on Quotev, a look. It's a much more adult story than this but has the same theme of a character fighting for non-human rights in the Potterverse, and it's a pretty good story, albeit in a completely different way from mine. Also, as usual, thanks to all reviewers, followers and favers!_

 **Chapter XVI: _New Classes, New Faces_**

Hermione's summer was just as pleasant as the previous one. She enjoyed the company of her family, as well as that of Nettle and her children. The young snakes were anxious to begin investigating the world outside the Grangers' garden, but were rightfully afraid of humans less friendly to snakes than Hermione and her parents. Hermione had given it a few days of thought and returned with ribbons she tied around the necks of each snake, along with a small tag indicating the snake was a pet, to be returned to the Grangers' home if found. Everyone congratulated her on this 'brilliant bit of thinking'.

Ron and Harry's summers were also very much the same as the last year: a tad lonely in Harry's case, but mostly happy. The biggest bit of excitement had been when Harry had written that his uncle Vernon had begun to threaten Kaiser with a shotgun, and Hermione had written back with good advice: to 'wear' Kaiser around his neck or wrist as often as possible. Much as he might dream to do so, Dursley couldn't very well open fire on his young ward. Meanwhile, Maximilian was spending the summer in Hogwarts, keeping Sirius Black company, and the senior Marauder was apparently planning a thousand pranks exploiting the boggart's shapeshifting talents. This information made Hermione tingle with a powerful mix of curiosity and utter terror.

September came as always and Hermione once again said good-bye to her parents, to the Dysons and to Nettle's family. (Tsh desperately wanted to come to Hogwarts with her, but Nettle strictly forbid him; he was still, by her reckoning, too young to be so far away from her for so long.)

The ride on the Hogwarts Express was not interrupted by any phantom abominations this time, unless you counted Draco Malfoy as a phantom abomination — but the blond bigot had just come into her compartment by accident and politely excused himself, although very little in his demeanor suggested he was _genuinely_ sorry to have bothered Hermione. Instead, Hermione was greeted by all of her student friends save Maximilian — not only Harry and Ron but also Neville, Ginny, Luna, and even people like Sally-Anne and Seamus. The Trolley Witch dropped by and Hermione and Harry shared the cost of buying everyone some pumpkin pastries. Hermione even purchased an additional one which she offered to the Witch herself, to her delight.

As soon as she arrived at Hogwarts, however, she was pulled aside by Professor McGonagall.

"What is it, Professor?" asked Hermione as they walked to her office, away from the crowd of students headed to the Sorting Feast. "Hello, by the way."

"Yes, good evening, Miss Granger," replied the older witch. "I will get right to the point — it concerns your… choice of electives."

"Yes," Hermione answered matter-of-factly, "I took them all. Why?"

"Well…" hesitated McGonagall, "you _are_ aware that the schedules of each one overlap?"

"I didn't particularly research it, Professor," Hermione answered. " _Hogwarts: A History_ said that 'arrangements' could be made for students who wished to take many electives at once, and that book has never led me astray before."

"Arrangements!" repeated Professor McGonagall, as if innerly amused but refusing to show it. "Well, something like that, yes, but — ah. Excuse me."

Jolted back to her surroundings, Hermione took stock of where Professor McGonagall had led her — in front of a plain wooden door in the Serpentine Corridor on the First Floor. McGonagall extracted a key from a concealed pocket in her robes and opened it to reveal her also normal-looking office.

"…Really?" Hermione asked, fighting back laughter. "No password, no invisible door, no spells? Just… a door? To your office?"

"Contrary to what you may believe," answered the Professor pointedly, " _some_ of the staff here are only _teachers_ trying to run a _school_."

"Ah," said Hermione sheepishly as she sat down on the chair in front of McGonagall's desk, "I suppose that makes sense."

"Well then," said the Head of Gryffindor, getting back to business. "You must understand that we can't just change all the schedules just because one student has very strong feelings about what electives she wants to take."

Hermione refrained her spontaneous self from saying 'Why not?', because the rest of her brain agreed that it would give off a very bad effect.

"Thus," added McGonagall, "we will have to resort to the obvious solution — time travel."

…

It was as though a dam had been broken just above Professor McGonagall's office. The dam that, in Hermione's mind, had held down all her theoretical questions about time-travel ever since she'd realized as a child that it was probably impossible.

An hour later, leaving a thoroughly exhausted McGonagall behind and with a shiny new Time-Turner around her neck, Hermione was off to honor her promise of secrecy by telling absolutely everyone about this.

* * *

"Wicked!"

* * *

"Be careful with it, though!"

* * *

"Merlin's beard! _Think of all the pranks!_ "

* * *

"Time travel? Is that… common for wizards? I'm afraid I've never really tried it."

* * *

{ _Time-Turner, huh. Can you eat that?_ }

* * *

{ _A fascinating discovery, Hermione Granger. I am glad for y… for Hermione Granger._ }

* * *

"Time-Turner, you say? Well, it's not worth a double-quilling space-time-swinger, but I suppose it's a rather neat Hogwatch gift."

* * *

ProfessorMcGonagall had given Hermione a very strict, very long handbook about what to do and not to do with her Time-Turner. The book felt as though it had been written by a very easily frightened rocket-scientist using words pinched here and there in a dictionary of miscellaneous jargon, but the long and short of it seemed to be that time-travel wasn't exactly _allowed_ under the rules of the universe. Traveling back in time (and that was the only thing one _could_ do, by all accounts; traveling to the future was not even mentioned) was risky because you might get clumsy and change the past's future, that was to say the present.

This had happened a couple of times in history and, rather like a computer forced to act as a bathtub, the world had taken a little while to recover. There were a few people whom records showed had been shoved somewhere in time-limbo because they'd only been born in the first timeline that the careless time-traveling had erased. The very knowledgeable wizarding scholar Eloise Mintumble had been sent four hundred years back in time in 1899, and this had resulted in twenty-five people being so 'unborn', not to mention time had had a bit of trouble restarting and remembering how long a day was supposed to last when she was finally brought back to her native time period.

The best course of action was thus to _trick_ fate into thinking everything was going logically. Whenever you travelled back in time, you were to be very careful not to contradict what you remembered had already happened. As long as you showed goodwill in allowing the established sequence of events to come to pass, magic would do the rest and arrange for the whole thing to look like a neat, stable loop of causality.

The mechanics were a little different than what muggle sci-fi authors assumed (it had more to do with enforced good luck than anything else), but it wasn't that hard to wrap your head around it.

And since magical good luck could only do so much, it was best not to travel too far back in time; five hours at a time was considered the absolute limit. Coming back to the same moment in time twice or more was also a strict 'don't', since obviously the likelihood of events turning out apparently the same was increasingly lower the more foreign agents you introduced.

It was all very complex and Hermione doubted that someone like Kaiser could have even _begun_ to wrap his head around it, but if you got the basics, the list of specific rules in the handbook ("Don't meet yourself, don't send a message to your past self, don't bring anything important back from the past with you") became self-evident, and you could dispense with learning them by heart. The only rule not directly related to paradoxes was to avoid standing in a place you knew had been occupied by a solid object at the time you were going back to, because magic trying to materialize you _inside_ a solid cement block, or, worse, another person, had… strange results. Somewhere in the Department of Mysteries there was a very ugly cupboard said to still house the mortal remains of time researcher Alberic Kettleburn. And possibly his soul, but that might've just been a rumor. Hermione might have to investigate that someday

Anyway, she had to draw some charts on parchment to sort it all out (everyone who didn't know about the Time-Turner wondered how on earth Hermione could already be doing Arithmancy homework before the first Arithmancy class), but she eventually worked out a very precise schedule of when to Time-Turn herself and where to go to do so every day.

With that taken care of, she began her first week of class as a Third-Year. Flitwick was Flitwick, and McGonagall was McGonagall, and Binns was Binns, and so on; the real news were the electives and the Defense Professor.

Their week began with Defence, and so she came to meet the new Defence Professor. The classroom used for that class had been furnished (either by the Professor, or by Hogwarts itself in accordance with the Professor's wishes, there was no telling) with drawings and posters and pickled jars of Dark Creatures. In a corner was a tank containing what Hermione was pretty sure was a Grindylow.

The Professor himself was a tall, relatively good-looking man wearing robes that one could only describe as _shabby_ — one would have been hard-pressed to point at a specific tear, but the fabric was worn and tired. The man's face was quite the same: with a neat mustache, harmonious features, and well-combed fair hair, it _sounded_ quite nice-looking, but it had a vague air of sadness, fatigue and misery.

Immediately betraying this impression of forlornness once all the students had come in, the man broke into a large grin and, with marked enthusiasm, introduced himself as Remus Lupin and began talking about, well, defending oneself against Dark Creatures.

Everyone in the class could hardly believe their eyes. This Professor had all the good sides of Professor Max and none of the bad, giving, for the moment, no sign of wanting to rip out anyone's entrails for academic purposes. He wasn't talking about the color of his eyes, either; nor did he wear a turban or any article of clothing likely to conceal a half-dead Dark Lord.

Just before Hermione left the room, Professor Lupin beckoned for her and Harry to come closer. Because you could hardly split them apart, Ron and Maximilian came too.

"Miss Granger! Harry!…" he began. "Oh, from today, I'm quite looking forward to teaching all of you, but — and let's keep it between us, of course — I wanted you to know: _I know Mr Padfoot_. _I am Mr Moony_."

All four children answered with simultaneous winks.

"See you later, Professor!"

* * *

Muggle Studies was a laugh for a muggle-born girl like herself, and she seriously debated whether to call out that nice but quite clueless Professor Burbage on the fact that half her information was fifty years out of date.

Ancient Runes was a rather straightforward language class; Professor Babbling was, likewise, a surprisingly normal teacher (by Hogwarts standards). She was a middle-aged woman with unremarkable features, long brown hair, and a warm voice. She didn't babble quite as much as her name would suggest; in fact, as soon as she was asked a question, it was Hermione doing must of the babbling.

Hermione was sure she'd get the hang of Runes soon enough — all this teaching Parseltongue to others had honed her own language skills rather well. Not to mention, Runes didn't seem like a language so much as a complex writing system bordering on the cryptogram — any language could be written in Runes, but it had a complex system of ideograms, implied words, and phonetic associations that made it extremely obscure. It was rather like what she knew of Hieroglyphs.

Because they had been designed that way, Runes were ideal for writing down magical theory — a single Runic sentence could easily encompass the spell's incantation, its effects, the wand movement required, and, if the writer was talented enough, even the name of its creator. It was also, at first glance, very cryptic (utter gibberish, one might say), and this also suited the secretive nature of most powerful sorcerers.

At the end of the first lesson, their first assignment was to translate a simple sentence from Ancient Runes back into English. She had two free hours of Time-Turning that day by her schedule, so immediately after the lesson, while her mind was still swirling with what she'd just begun to learn, she went down to the girls' bathrooms (where she was sure not to be seen) and Time-Turned back an hour. She sneaked off to the Marauders' Secret Classroom (which no one was currently occupying, since Sirius was, he'd said, preparing dinner in the Third Floor Corridor for Professor Lupin). There, she got to work on the essay, even as her younger self, in a classroom at the other side of the castle, was learning the very basics.

After ten minutes' work, Hermione realized the sentence was a variation on Hogwarts's Latin motto: " _Draco Dormiens Non Titillandus_ ", or "Do not tickle a sleeping dragon". Having wrapped this up, she spent the rest of the hour lounging away in the Classroom, idly wondering if Parseltongue translated well into Ancient Runes. As it turned out, it did, rather well. She had to make up a new sort of S to account for a particular variant in hissing that Runic phonemes didn't quite render, but the syntax was a shoe-in.

* * *

Care of Magical Creature, scheduled on Wednesday (concurrent with the Arithmancy class) had been cancelled at the last minute; Professor Kettleburn had apparently had a panic attack after seeing a particularly big flobberworm. It definitely sounded like that man needed a holiday, or, better still, retirement; Dumbledore made it clear in his announcement, if one read between the lines, that he was quite sorry Hagrid didn't have the necessary qualifications to become a Professor and replace Kettleburn, which had obviously been his lifelong ambition.

 _Say,_ wondered Hermione, _why exactly doesn't Hagrid have the necessary qualifications?_

But this question would have to wait a little while longer, as, Time-Turner or not, this period was filled at least one time over, by Arithmancy.

Arithmancy was taught by a stern-looking, black-haired witch called Professor Septima Vector. Professor Vector was wearing a conical hat. This didn't sound so strange for the wizarding world, but one must understand that all wizard hats, even the silliest ones, were still recognizably made of fabric, and thus they were all a bit floppy, a bit imperfect. Vector's hat, however, was a geometrically precise _cone_. It was so absurdly straight that she had to have _spelled_ it that way, there was no other possible means for such a thing to have come into existence.

Professor Vector's eyes were twinkling just like Dumbledore's when she began explaining some very important things to her students in a whisper of secrecy. _Arithmancy was not magic_. (They were not to repeat that to anyone else, of course, or Vector would make sure the snitches would get awful grades.)

Apparently, Arithmancy was _supposedly_ concerned with the study of the magical properties of numbers. And indeed, Vector said, this was what professional Arithmancers researched; but any study of worth in that field required a lot more knowledge of deep magical theory than third-year students could have gotten from Professor Flitwick's class, competent though the diminutive chap might be. The only things one could do at their level with proper Arithmancy was try and predict the future by crushing numbers, but that was more properly Divination, and (Vector told them not to repeat that to 'that old ladybug Sybill') Divination was mostly just superstition, even for wizards.

But some Headperson of old had instigated Arithmancy as an elective for Hogwarts, and Professor Dumbledore, rather than close it down for third and fourth years, had had a very clever idea.

It was, when you got right down to it, quite deplorable that Hogwarts taught _nothing at all_ of non-magical subjects (no classes in Literature or in Mathematics, let alone Physics or Biology). Not only was this an impeachment for those muggle-born graduates who wished to further their studies in the muggle world, but even the wizard-raised would, in Dumbledore's opinion, benefit from a little more background knowledge of things that _didn't_ involve breaking the laws of nature.

Actual Arithmancy involved quite a lot of mathematics, so it would not at all be suspicious if some beginner Arithmancy students' homework was made mostly of calculations.

And so, Dumbledore had Professor Vector teach her young students mathematics, as simple as that.

Just before the lesson ended, Professor Vector added:

"Of course, I shall have to go over the Arithmantic Divination techniques at the end of the year, but a period or two will do. Unless, of course, any of you are _true_ Seers…"

All answered in the negative.

Hermione loved the whole idea and didn't mind getting back into muggle science for a bit. Arithmancy was shaping up to be a favorite class of hers, without a doubt.

She was quite worried, on the other hand, about what Divination held in store, since the very reasonable Professor Vector seemed to consider it a host of superstitious nonsense congregated around a small, small nucleus of actual sorcerous lore.

It was, as she'd been warned by the Portrait McGonagall, quite a trial to find the Divination Classroom, although the help of a Portrait was invaluable. When she finally reached the elusive, oddly-decorated room, Professor Trelawney (a strange woman who seemed to be more beads, scarves, trinkets and amulets than flesh) began her lecture thusly:

"So you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field..."

This was around the time Hermione realized she may have made a very big mistake.


	19. What Are Friends For?

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _I wrote this in just two stretches, and as a result it's also essentially divided in two main sequences. At any rate, I hope you will all continue to enjoy this story and appreciate the clever little idea I have in this chapter! I also hope I have done Luna justice, she's a terribly hard character to get right. Finally, thanks to favers, followers and reviewers, please review more, etc., you know the drill._

 **CHAPTER XVII: _What Are Friends For?_**

On the week-end Harry spent some time with Sirius Black and Professor Lupin, getting them to tell him stories about his parents, and Ron went with him. Hagrid was off to the Forbidden Forest with the Great Basilisk to try and convince the Acromantulas that the Basilisk wasn't the herald of doomsday. Kaiser was… wherever Kaiser went while his human employers were at Hogwarts. Presumably somewhere in the Forbidden Forest — that, or he abused House-Elves' helpfulness and lounged away, well-fed, in the Kitchens. As for Maximilian, he had grown confident enough in his acting to now be trying to make friends with someone who _didn't_ know he was a Boggart.

If she wanted to have some company (and she did!), Hermione's only choice was thus either Minerva, that younger Portrait version of her Professor McGonagall, or Luna Lovegood.

A quick glance at her usual frame showed Hermione that Minerva wasn't there — she was presumably busy in some other part of Hogwarts, chatting with a Portrait acquaintance. It would be tactless (not to mention probably of no use) to go looking for her. Thus, Luna Lovegood it was.

Hermione found Luna standing by herself in a corner of the Great Hall, barefoot, wearing a very large pillowcase. She was holding a brush quizzically, as if wondering exactly what one was meant to do with it.

"…Luna, what are you doing?"

"I is not seeing a Luna, Hermione Granger," replied Luna, "I is beings an House-Elfette."

"What… why are you pretending to be a House-Elf?" asked Hermione.

"I is not knowing, Hermione Granger. It seemeds, yes, like the rights things to be doings."

" _Why?_ "

"I heards that youse has beens lookings for the House-Elves, Hermione Granger, and I thoughts by being pretendings that I is being a House-Elfette myselfs, I coulds be luring the House-Elves for you, yes?"

Hermione began to massage her forehead. It was already starting again. The Luna-ness.

"Look, Luna," she tried to explain, "House-Elves aren't blind; in fact, I suspect they have rather better eyesight than the average human. You don't _look_ like a House-Elf, you'd have to be a third your height, grey-skinned, and with big floppy ears… at _least_. Besides, Hogwarts House-Elves, although I do not know their precise numbers, cannot be _that_ numerous — they doubtless all know each other. The long and short of it is that you simply won't trick them just by wearing a pillowcase."

Hermione's gaze wandered back to Luna's bare feet.

"…Luna, has anyone been stealing your shoes again like in last September?" she asked, concerned.

The bullying of the odd girl had soon stopped when it had become apparent she was close friends with Hermione, herself close friends with a twenty-foot-long Basilisk. Was it starting again?

"No, Hermione Granger," Luna answered, quenching her fears. "I is not wearings any shoes because House-Elves isn't wearing any shoes, Hermione Granger."

Hermione considered this for a moment. She frowned.

"…Luna… You _are_ wearing unmentionables under that pillowcase… aren't you?"

Luna looked at her with her usual dreamy smile, obviously finding it a very odd question.

" _Luna_!" Hermione ordered. "Go back to your room! And only come back wearing something _decent_!"

* * *

Luna came back dressed in fluorescent lime-green robes, boots, and some sort of cowl or hat that looked like it was made out of tree leaves.

"Right. Where were we?"

"In the Great Hall," Luna replied, "just like right now. Would you like to go somewhere else?"

"You — no, no," Hermione answered, "it's alright."

"Well then!" Luna said, sitting down on a bench. "Tell me, how has your first week with a Time-Turner been? Did you meet any clockroaches?"

"Clockroaches?"

"They're guardians of Time, also known as Langoliers and Time-tigers."

"Oh," said Hermione, going along with the flow of Luna's latest creature-related bout of delirium. "I presume these… clock-roaches do not like time-travel very much?'

"No, they don't," Luna said grimly. "But they do like time-travelers."

"Do they?"

"Yes, with onions and some hot sauce."

Hermione resisted her imperious urge to gape for a few seconds at Luna's reply, but Sally Granger had managed to instill a primitive sense of tact into her daughter.

"Right," she said. "Well, no, I haven't seen any so far. I did spend a very useless hour in Divination Class."

"Divination?" Luna repeated, with an unusual amount of giddiness behind her word. "Oh, luck you! I hope to take Divination myself next year. I think I might be a Seer."

"You do?" (Somehow, Hermione wasn't surprised.)

"At the least, it would be very convenient for my father, I could predict all the day's scoops in advance and the _Quibbler_ could have a head start, because we'd already have the issue all ready as soon as the event happened. Yes. I think that would be very nice. Don't you, Hermione?"

"Well, that _would_ be convenient, I suppose," tempered Hermione, "…if it _did_ work…"

But before the Gryffindor could try to talk some reason into the Ravenclaw, Luna said brightly:

"Oh, I almost forgot! The latest issue just arrived by owlk!"

"…owlk?"

"My father's letter-deliverer is half-owl, half-hawk," Luna explained. "Haven't I mentioned this before?"

The creature in question, which had been nibbling on one of the floating candles overhead, gave a small chirp to signal its presence.

"I am… pretty sure this is just a Northern Hawk Owl," Hermione concluded after giving it a close look. "If I remember the _International Wildlife Encyclopedia_ right."

"That's what I said," said Luna, "a hawk-owl. We call him &§ƒƒ‡∂."

"You call him EEEEEEK?" Hermione asked, rubbing at her right ear. That shriek was absolutely ear-splitting.

"No, no, &§ƒƒ‡∂," corrected Luna, repeating exactly the same ear-splitting scream as before. "It's a Mermish word. It doesn't sound very good over the water, I'm afraid."

"Ah, Mermish, of course," said Hermione. "…Since when do you speak Mermish?"

"I don't really," said Luna, "but my father does. &§ƒƒ‡∂ is _his_ owl first and foremost, you see."

"Ah." said Hermione. "Yes, I suppose this makes sense. More or less. And what does it mean in Mermish?"

"I believe it means 'Pink Turnip'," replied Luna matter-of-factly. "So anyway. Do you want to see that issue, or not?"

Hermione smiled and nodded. The _Quibbler_ was just like Luna herself — always strange, often wrong, occasionally brilliant, and surprisingly endearing. It didn't have the respectability of something like the _Daily Prophet_ , and most of the articles were conspiracy-theory-like nonsense, but undoubtedly it was very nicely _made_. The writing, no matter what sort of rubbish it was actually _saying_ , was always good, and the magazine was gleaming with colors, where the _Prophet_ was nearly always black-and-white.

The issue with the _Quibbler_ , though, was again that… well… perhaps it was best illustrated by the headline of that particular issue.

 _STATUTE OF SECRECY_

 _THREATENED BY AMERICAN WIZARD!_

 _Dark Lord 'Oz' uses forgotten tornado magic_

 _to murder innocent Half-Goblin witches in America_

 _and kidnaps innocent muggle girls-_

 _Groundbreaking Muggle-made documentary_

 _from 1939 exposes Oz's evil deeds-_

 _Oz unavailable for questioning-_

 _See Pp. 3-10_

* * *

Most everyone (save for the Basilisk and Hagrid) seemed to be back when Hermione entered the Gryffindor Common Room after dinner. Maximilian was chatting excitedly with Seamus Finnigan, and winked at Hermione when he saw her come in. She began looking around for Harry and Ron, and Minerva told her they had already gone to their dormitory. She knocked on the door.

Ron, concern written all over his freckled face, opened the door quickly, grabbed Hermione by her sleeve, pulled her in, and closed the door again.

"Hermione," he said, "we'd need a bit of your trademark brilliance."

Hermione nearly blushed at her friend's casual praise and asked what the matter was. Harry was sitting on his bed and looked just as anxious as Ron. He answered:

"You know we were with Remus and Sirius for all of today…"

"Yes, of course," she nodded. "I hope you had a good time…?"

"Oh yes," said Harry, "you know Sirius, you can't get bored with him in the room — and Remus's very much like him when he starts, but here's the thing…"

"Wait," Ron cut his friend off, "Hermione, you really shouldn't get the wrong idea here… you know, with your being muggle-born and all — this isn't a Turban-level problem, there's no villain here, but… Professor Lupin, he's; erm… Oh, Harry, tell her!"

"Professor Lupin told us he's a werewolf," Harry blurted out.

"…A werewolf," Hermione said slowly. "Yes, that would explain his sickly look."

"You're… you do get this," Ron insisted, "that doesn't make him evil, except when he's a wolf, of course —"

"— _of course I do!_ " Hermione said loudly, a bit offended. "Honestly, Ron, me, being prejudiced against a nonhuman? For how long have you _known_ me?"

"Okay! Okay!" Ron said, pulling away from her. "Just making sure we're on the same page! Muggles sometimes get the strangest ideas — I mean, dad told me some of them think fairies are the most powerful creatures in the world, or, or that dragons talk, or—"

"Yes, yes, fine," Hermione granted, "and your dad thinks a rubber duck is advanced warfare technology. But I've knowingly been a witch for a few years. I've read up on things, you know."

"Look, Hermione," Harry then said, "the point is that lyc-lee-"

"Lycanthropy", Hermione finished effortlessly.

"Lycanthropy —" continued Harry, "—it's really more of a disease, or a curse. He wasn't born that way, and he hates being a werewolf. It makes him a danger to everybody, gits like Malfoy are just as bigoted against him as against muggles, and anyway it's just not _healthy_ — apparently he's in a terrible state for the few days after each transformations, and, and he tries not to think about it but werewolves usually don't even… don't even live very long…"

"So we were hoping you could find a cure, or, or a workaround of some kind," Ron concluded.

Hermione sat still for a moment.

"So let me get this right," she said finally. "You want _me_ — little twelve-year-old _me_ — to find a cure for Lycanthropy? That is, the most sought-after Cure in the history of Magical Healing, Curse-breaking and Transfiguration combined? _Me_?"

Harry and Ron nodded hopefully.

Hermione sighed, gave a small laugh, and said:

"…Alright, give me a week or two."

* * *

Hermione spent Sunday in the Library, reading up everything she could find on Lycanthropy, the history of the curse itself, and the existing research for a cure. Setting aside the more arcane spell research that she wasn't quite on the level of yet, most attempts had been experimental potions, to often disastrous results — a few had permanently turned the poor fellows into wolves, a few more had had no discernible effect, and a frightening number had resulted in the death of the subjects the next time they should have transformed into their wolf form.

Nicolas Flamel himself had researched a possible use of his Philosopher's Stone to cure werewolfery, but while the Elixir of Life did help the werewolf recover faster from the after-effects of their transformation, it was of no avail when it came to stopping the transformation altogether.

The most recent and brilliant advance had been the discovery of the Wolfsbane Potion by the genius Potioneer Damocles Belby. That clever brew managed to quench the transformed werewolf's bloodlust and rage, allowing them to regain their senses and keep a rational, human mind all through the night. It was a great deal, of course, but it was not enough — it removed part of the danger to others, but did nothing to better the werewolf's health, not to mention that it was terribly expensive because of how hard it was to make.

Hermione paused as she finished reading about the Wolfsbane Potion. So the human mind could be made to prevail — the human _soul_ could… She needed to look something up. Or, rather, _ask_ someone about something. No books were likely to contain the information she was looking for.

* * *

"Why yes, Miss Granger," Sir Nicholas replied, "I do know the ghost of a werewolf; Jonathan Norton; although he's not what I would call a friend, I'm afraid; he's the treasurer of the Headless Hunt. You see, he was killed by some muggle who had gotten it in his head that the only safe way to kill a werewolf was to cut off his head… Terrible business, although now he flaunts it instead, lucky chap…"

"Yes, thank you, Sir Nicholas," Hermione cut off the flow of gossip that was sure to follow, "but what I really wanted to know was this: can this Mr Norton still transform into a ghostly version of his wolf self?"

"Can he…?" Sir Nicholas pondered. "No, I don't believe so, Miss Granger; of all the times I have seen him, even when trying his best to be terrifying, no, he never… No, Miss Granger, I think I can safely say he cannot."

"Thank you, Sir Nicholas, good day!" waved Hermione as she began to leave.

"Oh! Wait!" said the ghost. "Will you join us at my Deathday Party? 31st of October, I'll send you a formal invitation later —"

"Hm?" Hermione said absent-mindedly. "Yes, yes, of course, Sir Nicholas, of course. Good bye!"

"Splendid! See you then, Miss Granger!" said the overjoyed ghost as he glided away.

Hermione had already spaced out at this point. This was just as she hoped — Lycanthropy was clearly a curse on the _body_ , not on the _soul_ , it was just some very dark variant of Transfiguration — possibly with an Imperius-like compulsion to harm humans added on top of it… Wolfsbane Potion was able to lift the compulsion, but since that was an entirely different part of the spell, it did nothing for the transformation… It all made sense.

And _if_ that was how it worked, then she might just have an idea. It would be risky, but it was worth a try.

* * *

"Luna, I think I've got it, but out of curiosity — how would _you_ go about curing a werewolf of their werewolfishness?"

"I'd get a Dabberblimp to suck their fur off their bones."

"…I just thought I'd ask."

* * *

"Professor Lupin," Hermione said, having caught the Professor on his way back from dinner. "Harry and Ron told me about your… little problem —"

"Don't be shy, Hermione," said the Professor warmly, "I gave them free leave to tell you… And please, call me Remus, or Moony. We're all Marauders here, aren't we?"

"Yes, thank you," Hermione answered. "My point is, I think I _may_ have an idea for… you know, for curing _it_. In a way."

"Are… do you realize the gravity of what you are saying?" said Remus gravely.

"I do, Pr- Remus." said Hermione, "but as I have already beaten Voldemort, I don't think it's fair to brush this up as idle talk from a child."

"No… no, of course not…" Remus answered. "Very well, Hermione, but let's go somewhere else than the Great Hall… We may have to discuss the _problem_ in less vague terms that it would not do for others to overhear."

"Of course."

She followed him silently to his office, which he had apparently already had time to refurnish after Professor Max's departure. (You could tell because the curtains weren't made out of cobwebs and there were no tarantulas crawling between the cupboards.)

"Well then, Hermione…" said the werewolf as he sat down. "Let's hear it."

"Professor, I need to be sure of a few things, first," Hermione said nervously. "I take it that hiding from the physical rays of the Full Moon doesn't protect one from the transformation, or it wouldn't be such a terrible curse, would it —"

"No, of course not," Remus dismissed sadly.

"I expected as much," Hermione said. "But what if the werewolf were to Apparate, or Portkey, to a part of the world where the moon hasn't risen yet, even though it would already be up in their homeland — would they transform anyway?"

"Well, no," Remus said with a sad smile, "it's a rather clever suggestion, Miss Granger, I'd aware Gryffindor quite a few points for it if we were in class… but of course, it has already been considered, and it doesn't truly work. There _is_ a limit to how often a human body can be squeezed through spacetime, you know. A single Portkey to the other side of the planet might stall the transformation for a while, but to keep avoiding it forever would require more Portkey-trips at once than a human body, especially the weakened one of a lycanthrope, can handle. Was that your idea?"

"No, no, although it's the same principle," Hermione said. "Let me check some more, first, however… I trust you know about Time-Turners?"

"Of course I know about Time-Turners!" Lupin said, as if it was a joke. "I'd rather ask how _you_ know about T-"

Hermione pointed to the so-called spimster-wicket around her neck.

"Ah yes, forgive me, I forgot." chuckled Remus. "Carry on."

"Have there been any attempts," Hermione began, "for werewolves to go back a few hours with a Time-Turner or similar methods, when they were just on the brink of transforming?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact," he said.

"Did the Time-Turned lycanthropes transform then?" she asked eagerly.

"No," Remus explained, "they didn't, the Full Moon really does have to _be there_ for it to work… but of course, it's not really a solution, either, because you can only rewind time for five hours before having to go through the night anyway…"

"Not my idea either, Remus, don't worry," Hermione reassured him. "It's just the same basic principle. Well, I think it really could work! Professor, I trust that you are familiar with Petrification?"

"Not a Body-Bind Curse, I hope," said the Professor. "Such weak spells are of no use on werewolves, we are magic-resistant when transformed."

"No, Professor, I do mean Petrification," Hermione insisted.

"As in, from the stare of a Cockatrice or a Gorgon?" said Remus, taken aback. "But hermione, the breeding of Cockatrices is banned, and the bare few Gorgons left in the world would never —"

"That is the same sort of Petrification, Remus," Hermione said with a smile, "but not from a Cockatrice or Gorgon. A Basilisk can Petrify you as well, you see, if you look at its Gaze _in a reflection_."

"You can?!…" said Remus, smiling more and more. "Why, I never knew — well yes, theoretically speaking, it _would_ make arithmetic sense… And — of course, there's a friendly Basilisk in Hogwarts now of all things-! By Merlin, it… it really could work!… And the Basilisk would consent to…?"

"I'm sure she would," Hermione said, smiling from the Senior Marauder's contagious, tearful joy. "She's dying to be useful… I can't imagine what it must be like, knowing you were bred as an instrument of death and bigotry — she'd do anything to redeem her history. She'll love the idea, I'm certain of it."

"Being Petrified for the night of the-" Remus was walking around his office, on the brink of laughter, "— Hermione, this is phenomenal! You'll get an Order of Merlin for this, Second Class at _least_! You — I — this would practically make lycanthropy a thing of the past!"

"Or the werewolf might die as soon as the Petrification is reversed," Hermione said clinically, almost sorry to put a damper on Remus's joy.

The werewolf stared at her with round eyes, silent.

"I mean, I'm _pretty sure_ it will work," Hermione argued, "but there _is_ a pattern with the Potion cures, and every Potioneer were _pretty sure_ they had it, too. I think it might be worth testing anyway, but… you have to understand the risks."

"I'll take them, I'll take them in a heartbeat," Remus said, "if it means I might pave the way for all of us lycanthropes to — come, Hermione, we have to speak to Dumbledore. But _thank_ you, _thank you so much_ —"

"Heh!" Hermione said with a smile as she got up to follow him. "What are friends for?"


	20. Friends and Enemies

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _I'm quite sorry this took longer than usual, but in exchange, this chapter is extra-long! Again thanks to all Favoriters and Reviewers and Followers, and a reminder that reviews put a smile on my face._

 **CHAPTER XVIII: _Friends and Enemies_**

Hermione (and Lupin) came out of Dumbledore's office much more level-headed than they had come in, although they were both understandably still quite giddy with their breakthrough. The elderly sorcerer agreed that it was a brilliant idea that may well work, but he tempered their enthusiasm by pointing out that more testing had to be done before they could dare to experiment on a real werewolf. The first test was to check precisely whether a Petrified being's metabolism was still functioning, or if it truly did stand still in spite of all rhyme and reason; Dumbledore leaned towards the latter, as at least the weight of Petrified individuals stayed consistent (Madam Pomfrey's records of the 1943 Petrifications established that beyond the shadow of a doubt), but more had to be done, because a mistake there could well spell Lupin's doom. None of them wanted to gamble on the results of the body trying to morph into its wolf for while every muscle of it was unnaturally paralyzed.

All this would require a willing non-lycanthrope subject, and a safe room to conduct experiments in, and a Healer on stand-by in case something went awry, and several magical instruments to assert the Petrified person's state, and constant supervision by Hermione and Dumbledore themselves. In short, it would take time to set up, time they didn't have as the evening of Sunday drew close. The full moon was still two weeks away; the experiments could, and would have to, wait until Wednesday at the least, and more realistically the next week-end.

Thus, on Monday morning, Hermione put her thoughts on the matter aside and focused on another bright week of learning magic in the best magical school in the world.

Her usual enthusiasm for learning at Hogwarts had been kindled by the Defence and Runes lessons, but when Wednesday came, it was seriously put to the test. For that day would be the day of her first Care of Magical Creatures class, which she took along with Harry and Ron — Maximilian sat this one out for fear that a competent Creatures expert might guess at his true nature, and had taken Arithmancy and Ancient Runes as his electives.

The first sign that something was amiss with the class was that the schedule given to them by McGonagall indicated it was actually an _indoors_ course. Of course, there _were_ some magical creatures that lived indoors (Maximilian's kin were a prime example), but hardly the sort one would expect would be handled in a Care of Magical Creatures class.

Hermione took the lead as the students entered the classroom that had been chosen for the class. She took in its appearance. It was an unbelievably interesting sight. It was not only that it paled in comparison to Professor Lupin's heavily themed Defence classroom, but this one was not themed at all. Not a poster, not a diagram, not even a Monster Compendium laying on the desk. Say what you will about him, even Professor Snape grasped the basic concept of making an impression. That Care of Magical Creatures classroom could just as well have been a Charms Classroom, or even a muggle classroom.

It took a moment for Hermione to realize Professor Kettleburn was already there, sitting behind the desk. He was an old and frail wizard with a short white beard that was mildly scorched on the left side, soft brown eyes, and an unmistakable air of weariness about him. His shoulders, one could see even beneath his thick plain brown robes, were drooping slightly. He was leaning against the back of a wooden armchair.

Once all the students had found a seat, Kettleburn lifted his left hand from beneath his desk, revealing it to be a prosthetic that looked as though it were made of gold. Hermione marveled at the sight, and Tracey Davis (sitting behind her) stared at it greedily. Kettleburn slowly closed that metallic hand and knocked against the wood of the desk, calling for the students' silence and attention.

"Ah, er…" Kettleburn began, fumbling with his words.

It was a bad sign when a teacher didn't know how to begin their lecture during the very first lesson of the year.

"Yes, um, ah" he continued, "I deeply apologize for having been… absent, last week… That flobberworm really, it really was — was — you had to be there. Er. My name is Kettleburn, Silvanus Kettleburn, I'm the Care of Magical Creatures Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, that class being an elective students can take from third year onw—"

The entire class stared at Kettleburn with round eyes.

"—oh, sorry, yes, of course, you already know all that, don't you…" Kettleburn stopped in his tracks. "Oh dear me… _Youth, where hast thou so fled?_ Bah. Anyway, I…"

Kettleburn looked at the expectant children. He gulped and took a deep breath.

"I meant for you to study flo… flobberworms, but I really, I'm, I tried to prepare…"

No one had said anything — even Draco Malfoy in the back had stayed quiet so far — but Kettleburn was growing more and more distressed by the moment.

"I can't, I really can't…" he muttered.

He rose from his desk briskly, revealing his right foot was a golden prosthetic of the same make as his hand. He began walking towards the door.

"I'm sorry, sir," Draco called, looking unusually concerned (in that he looked concerned at all — Draco usually looked aloof, he made a point of it). "Before you go, I just wanted to ask —"

"I really can't, I really… I am too old for this…" Kettleburn moaned, more to himself than in response to Draco's stunted question.

Still confusingly apologizing, Professor Kettleburn walked out of the classroom and politely closed the door behind him.

"Blimey…" said Ron.

Everyone could agree with that sentiment.

It only took a moment for Hermione to realize that that poor Ilpoat Kettleburn had somehow developed a sort of phobia of his own _subject_. By the same token, it was fairly obvious how Kettleburn's missing limbs fit into that pictures. And if the Care of Magical Creatures professor usually handled creatures so dangerous they'd dismembered and traumatized even him… then Hermione could see how his pupil Rubeus Hagrid turned out the way he did.

* * *

After the rest of the free period had been spent finishing a Charms assignment only due on Friday, Hermione enjoyed a second Arithmancy class. Thursday was likewise free of Ilpoats and distractions. In Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall taught them how to turn teapots into tortoises.

"But… why, Professor?" Maximilian asked.

"What is it, Mr Candy?"

"Under what circumstances," Maximilian elaborated, "would a wizard like myself so urgently need a tortoise, as to sacrifice some fine china for it?"

Now that her friend mentioned it, the sense behind large chunks of the Transfiguration curriculum did elude Hermione. Matchsticks into needles and such spells had very practical applications, but only now did Hermione begin to ponder what strange circumstances would require a beetle to be transformed into a button.

Fortunately, McGonagall quickly explained herself — while most wizards had to limit themselves to set spells like hers, the greatest masters of Transfigurations could dispense with such commodities and mold any item into anything they imagined. McGonagall demonstrated this by asking two students for random elements (ones that surely didn't have a dedicated spell for one to be made into the other), and performing the required Transfiguration on the fly. (It consisted in turning a pink pencil-case into an elephant tusk.) McGonagall further explained that such skill could only be achieved if one had practiced very varied Transfigurations and developed a particular proclivity for the types of magical currents involved. The surprising requirements of the class were simply meant to encourage any budding Transfiguration prodigies that may be present in any given class, and were always good practice for the others.

Hermione innerly cheered that, for once, an oddity of the Wizarding World actually had a perfectly reasonable explanation behind it. She really should have expected such a thing from a class taught by Professor Minerva McGonagall.

They went back to turning their teapots into tortoises.

…Where did Hogwarts get all those teapots anyway? Perhaps McGonagall Transfigured them from rabbits, that was a fourth-year spell, but then where did they get the rabbits? Did they breed them? But hat would mean that Hogwarts technically _bred teapots_. Surely not. Although if they did, Hagrid was probably in charge of the program, backed up by Dumbledore.

She went back to turning her teapot into a tortoise.

* * *

It was on Thursday evening, some time after dinner. Hermione had, for once, managed to locate Kaiser; she was trying to convince him _not_ to eat her new pet tortoise, Earl Gray. As she scolded him in Parseltongue in the middle of (fittingly enough) the deserted Serpentine Corridor, she was accosted by the resident blond nuisance, Draco Malfoy.

"Hrm," Draco coughed.

Hermione didn't look up. She was quite lost in her hissed explanations of the exceptions to Gamp's Law, which, to be fair, were quite lost _on_ Kaiser, too. (He more or less got that that tortoise was probably not as tasty as it looked. That was the extent of his understanding of magical theory.)

"Hrm hrm," Draco insisted, and this time there was no mistaking these loud calls for an actual coughing fit.

Hermione had moved on to discussing the philosophical theory behind behind good to thine neighbor and how the fact that Earl Gray was Hermione's property and pet fit into that scheme. (Kaiser had worked out that Hermione wanted to keep the tortoise to herself, and this was apparently normal human behavior.)

"Hello!" Draco said, still standing right in front of her crouched form.

"Yes, hello, Malfoy," Hermione replied unthinkingly before returning to her explanations.

After another minute, Draco lost all patience and called, quite rudely:

" _Granger_!"

"Hm?" she looked up.

"I… I need to talk to you," Draco said as if the very words burnt his tongue.

Hermione sighed.

{ _Kaiser, report to Harry,_ } she sent the snake away, { _and stay away from that tortoise._ }

{ _Why?_ } Kaiser said defensively, though he did began to slither away.

{ _…Because I told you to,_ } Hermione said, defeated, { _and I'm bigger and stronger than you are. Now shoo._ }

{ _Ah yes,_ } said Kaiser, satisfied. { _That makes sense._ }

"You were saying, Malfoy?" said Hermione as she got up, cradling Earl Gray in her arms.

"Granger, I… I…" Draco hesitated.

Hermione paled. If her limited knowledge of romance novels had taught her anything, this was when Draco would reveal he was secretly in love with her despite their star-crossed backgrounds (a complete misuse of that expression, by the way), and that his conflicted affection had manifested as wanton, petty aggressiveness. She had a cure for lycanthropy to create and a hidden society of magic-users to reform, she simply didn't have _time_ to handle an unattractive, unpleasant lovesick would-be-Romeo. Not this week.

Fortunately, the Slytherin finally worked up enough strength to finish his sentence, and put all those worries to rest.

"…I… _need_ … your help."

"Ah, you do?" Hermione said in a very business-like tone. "What is the matter, how may I be of assistance, and what is my incentive for helping you?"

"It's…" the gobsmacked boy commented, "… that's a very Slytherin sort of thing to say."

"And it's not a very Slytherin thing to do, Malfoy," Hermione replied bitingly, "to compliment the person you're trying to bargain with. Do you know _anything_ about being cunning, or did you just get into Slytherin on your _father_ 's good name? I swear, _Ron Weasley_ is better at being cunning than you are."

Draco's pale complexion had taken a distinctly red tone, but, to his credit, he did outwardly contain himself and reply as calmly as manageable:

"Granger, this is no time to start another _argument_. I need your help and I _can_ make it worth your while. Of course I can. I'm a M-"

Hermione looked at him victoriously.

"Anyway," Draco back-pedaled, "I can't tell you about it here where anybody could walk in on us. I can't be seen dealing with the likes of _you_ , m-… I just can't. And besides, the… problem itself, it's a secret too."

"Would a password-protected secret room do?" Hermione asked matter-of-factly.

Draco nodded uncertainly.

Hermione pressed her wand against the tip of an unlit candle on the wall and said:

" _Snytrian Ravenclaw._ "

The alcove housing the candle suddenly expanded to become an entire doorway. Hermione ushered Draco through that door and into one of Hogwarts's many, many secret rooms. This one had obviously been a reading cabinet of sorts, likely set up by a past Head of Ravenclaw who wanted some peace away from his students' unending questions. There was a large puffy armchair in the center, and Hermione had no qualms about confidently sitting down there. On the left was a shelf, kept in pristine condition by centuries-old charms but unfortunately empty of books. Above the shelf hung a frame which housed the Portrait of a portly wizard in orange robes, reading a large golden-bound book, whom Hermione rather suspected to have been the room's designer.

"So," Hermione asked, "what was the matter? And why would someone like _you_ seek out the help of someone like _me_?"

"That's not hard to guess, Granger," Draco answered with a weak hint of his usual smirk. "That's because of your Parseltongue."

"But why me? Ron speaks quite excellent Parseltongue for a non-gifted, and then there's Harry, of course, and Luna —"

"Loony Lovegood? _Please_!" Draco said, this time with a full smirk.

"She happens to be a dear friend of mine," Hermione said icily.

"Ah, uh, that's nice," Draco muttered unconvincingly, his eyes fixed on the wand clutched in Hermione's right hand. "And Potter and Weasley… You know what they're like, they'd hex me before I could get a word in."

"Perhaps," granted Hermione, "but you have no one but yourself to blame for that, Malfoy. You _are_ that same arrogant bully who repeatedly tried to get us in detention or expelled in First Year, to, might I add, hilariously pathetic results. Well, aren't you?"

"I _said_ ," the angry boy countered, "let's not start rekindling old grudges. My point is, _you_ 're the only Parselmouth I can talk to about my _problem_."

"Which is?" Hermione prompted.

"Well, Father has this pet snake, you see," Draco began. "He's called Apophis."

"Heh," snickered Hermione. "It figures _your_ snake friend would be called Apophis."

Draco obviously didn't understand the reference. Ah well.

"Yes, well. Anyway. What's the point?"

"I'm getting to it, Granger, I'm getting to it," Draco said angrily. "So, I said he was Father's pet, but he's really more of a weapon. Father keeps him in the basement, starves him so he'll be more ferocious."

"Lovely," seethed the girl.

Muggles's unwitting disregard of snake rights was one thing. But _willful mistreatment_ like this… Malfoy (Malfoy Senior, that was) would pay for this. And rather sooner than later.

"Only, for many months now, Apophis has been acting… strangely," Draco continued. "It's been getting steadily worse since Christmas last or so. He… he seems to be pleading for something every time Father or I come to check on him, and Dobby has been reporting the same thing…"

"Dobby?" Hermione questioned.

She had a very good idea who Dobby was, but she wanted to make sure.

"Yes, Dobby," Draco said haughtily, "I wouldn't expect a mu… ggle-born like you to understand, but he's the Malfoy family-"

"-abused slave. Yes, I know."

" _I wouldn't put it like that_ —" Draco argued.

"No, you wouldn't, because you're stupid and a bigot," Hermione acknowledge.

" _Oh, shut your impure Merlin-damned trap!_ " yelled Malfoy. " _Can't you see I'm trying to be friendly here?!"_

Realizing just what he'd said, Draco shrunk down, expecting to be on the receiving end of the Basilisk-Tamer's wrath.

"Language, Draco Malfoy," Hermione said calmly. "You were saying?"

"I'm saying that Apophis looks like he wants, or, or _needs_ , something… And that wouldn't surprise me, he looks ill… no visible injury, but, ah, you'd have to see him."

"And that is precisely the point, isn't it?" she deduced. "You want me to have a look at Apophis, and to ask him myself what's wrong with him?"

Draco nodded hopefully.

"Yeah… I tried to speak to Father, but he insists he has no idea what to do. He… he didn't even want me to think about it. But you…"

"That seems reasonable," she agreed. "In fact, I think I shall even do it for free — oh, don't look so surprised, Malfoy, it's not for your sake, it's for the snake's. Well then, how may we arrange the meeting? I trust your _dear doting father_ wouldn't take kindly to you bringing home some _mudblood_ for tea and crumpets…"

Draco looked mildly surprised at her use of the insult, but his features were once again the picture of smugness when he explained in reply:

"Don't worry, that is the _point_ of Apophis as a weapon. Were he no more than a venomous snake, he'd be no better than a muggle's pet… but there are ways… _obscure_ ways, if you see my meaning… for a wizard to mark a snake, and summon it to him wherever he goes through a simple spell."

This looked fascinating and full of possibilities, but also like the perfect set-up for a trap.

"I assume," Hermione said with a calculating look, "that you intend to cast that spell her and now…?"

Draco nodded.

"That is to say that you mean to cast a _Dark Spell_ in my general direction, with no witnesses?"

"What? No! I—"

"Maybe you're too stupid for that. But maybe there _is_ a reason the Sorting Hat put you in Slytherin after all. I'm not falling for it, Malfoy."

"You're… you're not doing it?" Malfoy asked in disbelief. "Apophis might _die_ , you know,…! If you don't…!"

"Oh, spare me your kindergarten-playground attempts at emotional manipulation!" Hermione huffed. (It was a testament to her oral mastery that she could _huff_ this sort of phrase all at once.) "Of course I'll do it. But on _my_ terms."

Before Draco could get another word in, she tapped her wand to the frame of the portrait above the shelf. The red-bearded portrait-wizard set his portrait-book down on the portrait-stool beside him and looked down at the flesh-and-blood girl below.

"Yes?" he said in a nasal voice. "My name is Wistram Weasley, how do you do? How may I help you?"

"For reasons that I'll explain later if it's of interest to you," Hermione explained, "I need to allow this here Slytherin git to cast a spell without me countering it. This spell is supposedly not dangerous, but I want you to bear witness to the proceedings, and I want _you_ to know that, Malfoy. If you try anything, there's a witness there whom you cannot possibly silence."

Draco looked at her with a mix of outrage and disbelief.

"You muggle little - there's no _way_ ," he said through clenched teeth, "that some… some Portrait's testimony would convict the son of Lucius Malfoy. …And anyway, I'm _not_ planning anything!"

"If you say so, Malfoy, if you say so," Hermione answered, waved away his objections. "Mr Weasley, are you watching closely? Yes, thank you. Well then, Malfoy, I think you may proceed."

Hermione walked backwards a few paces (as much as the size of the room would allow). Draco raised his wand sharply, took a deep breath and intoned:

" _Serpensortia!_ "

The girl (and Weasley) watched with interest as the tip of Draco's wand seemingly exploded and a long black snake shot out of it like a spell, landing with a _Thump_ on the armchair.

The serpent did indeed look sickly, tired and poorly fed — but more surprising to Hermione was that she didn't recognize his breed. Apophis was at least four feet long, black-scaled, red-eyed, and he had two protruding, almost comically-oversized fangs.

"I… this is what was meant to happen? No trickery?" the Portrait of Wistram Weasley made sure.

"Yes, thank you, Mr Weasley," Hermione said.

"Good, good," smiled Weasley. "Well then, if you have no further need of me, I think I'll go find a quieter frame to read in until you two are done doing… whatever it is you're doing. Good day!"

Weasley waved good-bye to Wistram as he plodded out of his frame and out of sight. She then turned to the snake.

{ _Greetings, Apophis_ }, Hermione said in Parseltongue to the dazed reptile. { _My name is Hermione Granger, I am a human Speaker. They tell me you are unwell._ }

{ _Speaker…_ } Apophis hissed weakly. His eyes were shut. { _Maker…_ }

{ _Apophis,_ } she insisted. { _Wake up. This is important. What is happening to you? What do you want?_ }

{ _Am dying…_ } the black snake replied. { _Need… the…_ }

{ _Why are you dying?_ } the girl prompted. { _What must we do?_ }

{ _The Diary… Malfoy… must-have…_ }

"Malfoy," Hermione said, looking up, "do you know anything about a diary?"

Draco paled.

"I… I…"

"Ah, good," said Hermione, "you do. Why your father thought giving Ginny a notebook copy of the Turban, I shall never understand. Well, apparently, Apophis needs the Diary."

"But… why would he…?" Draco began.

{ _Apophis, why do you need the Diary? What must you do with it?_ }

{ _I must be… close…_ } the strained serpent explained, { _if the Masters do not… keep it… near me… I die…_ }

{ _I see,_ } Hermione hissed before telling Draco in English: "It appears there's some sort of curse on him and the Diary; he'll grow weaker and die if he's away from it for too long. Malfoy, how long ago exactly did Apophis start weakening?"

"I… I think about a year ago, a little less perhaps…" Draco answered. "At first we assumed he was simply getting old…"

"Yes, yes, it fits," Hermione said to herself. "Oh dear, we may not have much time."

"Of course…" Draco whispered too. "There's nothing Father _can_ do then… but he knows full well what has been happening! That must be it…"

Meanwhile, Hermione, crouching in front of had begun reassuring Apophis, telling him she had the Diary and he would soon be returned to health.

{ _You are… a kind… Mistress…_ } the large snake said, grateful.

She was about to thank him when she heard words she had used many times before.

" _Petrificus Totalus!_ "

She felt her whole body freeze and her arms snap to her sides. Draco whirled her around away from Apophis to face her with his evil smirk.

"Stupid little Gryffindor mudblood," he began to gloat. "You thought you were so clever, didn't you? But your 'witness' is gone now. It was genuine, you know — I really wanted to know what was up with Apophis… but I did _also_ want to get rid of _you_. Of Potter, too, I suppose, but _mostly_ you."

Despite her paralyzed muscles, she tried her best to glare at him in anger.

"Now now…" chuckled Draco. "I know what you're thinking. I'd get in trouble, hm? If you were found dead from a curse. I must admit I'm a likely suspect."

And Hermione felt fear. Draco Malfoy was cleverer and meaner than she'd given him credit for. He had her now, and… and for the first time since the Acromantulas, she wasn't sure she'd _survive._

 _"_ But I'm not going to do it with a curse, Granger," her captor continued his monologue. "I have a devoted weapon of my family right here… Even if I can't ever put him right, Apophis will have been useful to a Malfoy one last time… You're always messing about with snakes, aren't you, what would be so odd if the amateur Parselmouth got too confident and got in over her head with a venomous snake…"

She was going to die by _snakebite_. Oh, the irony.

"I and Father, we can speak a little bit of Parseltongue, you know… Heheheh… Just repeating orders, little enough that I still needed you… Watch: { _Apophis, kill!_ }"

Hermione would have been quaking in fear if not for the Body-Bind Curse.

Slowly, Apophis slithered off the armchair, yawning wide, baring his giant fangs.

The large black serpent slithered on the floor… he twisted and turned around Hermione's legs, and around Draco's… Coiled himself around Draco's ankles…

And tensed.

Draco tripped and fell on his back, releasing his wand which rolled several feet away from him.

"No! No! I said bite _her_!"

Apophis crawled onto Draco's chest, his yellow eyes looking straight into Draco's pale grey ones.

"No! No! Please!" pleaded the boy, losing all of his arrogance.

But Apophis stopped just short of biting Draco's nose. Instead, he turned to Hermione meaningfully before turning back to Draco and hissing menacingly.

"…What…?" Draco mouthed before he understood. "…Yes! Yes! Anything you say! I'll do it!"

Apophis hissed at him again before moving slightly aside to allow Malfoy access to his wand, while still keeping him pinned on the ground.

The gasping young wizard twirled his wand in the counter-curse of the Body-Bind. Hermione almost fell backwards from the jolt, but kept a grip of her wand and trained it on Draco.

{ _Thank you, Apophis,_ } she said, { _I will take you to the Diary shortly._ } "As for you, Malfoy, I'm going to give you this _one, last chance_. If you ever try to cause me or mine harm again, _there won't be enough left of you for your precious Father to mourn_! Now get out!"

"But… yes, but…" Draco tried to object, gesturing futilely at Apophis.

" _He_ is now under my _protection_ ," she answered harshly. "And for once, I _want_ your Father to 'hear about this'."

"I… I…"

"Go. Away."

* * *

"Hi, Sirius! So you're not going to believe this…"


	21. Problems Most Peculiar

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This again took longer than expected. I've been busy with miscellaneous real-life problems, followed by illness. But again, we're back on track! I will take this story to its conclusion, I swear to Merlin I will. Also, if you don't know what I'm referencing in the second part… you haven't been in the HP fandom much as of late, but Googling "Botnik Harry Potter" ought to be enlightening. And now, on with the story! Cheerio!_

 **CHAPTER XIX: _Problems Most Peculiar_**

Friday brought another perfectly useless Divination class where Professor Trelawney insisted they were all in mortal peril. (The silly thing, of course, was not so much the prediction itself as the idea that one needed Divination to come to that conclusion.)

Trelawney also seemed convinced that the size of a wizard's aura was indicative of their abilities as a Seer, and as a result had gotten it in her head that Ron was one of the greatest Seers of the century, being that his aura was especially large and flashy. Hermione knew this made no sense, of course, as she quickly explained to the disappointed boy. Yes, one's aura was a manifestation of one's magic, and a skilled Aurologist might predict some of an individual's powers from a precise study; but the size in and on itself was only a function of how good the wizard's control over their magic was. (A flashy aura, in fact, indicated that Ron should probably try to calm down a bit and rein his power in.)

Still, the whole thing suggested that that particular Ilpoat at least had a genuine ability to sense auras, which was _something_.

* * *

Saturday morning saw Professor Dumbledore, Professor Lupin, Sirius and Hermione gather in the Hospital Wing, where they were greeted by Madam Poppy Pomfrey, Hogwarts's Head Healer. After some more praise, thanks and similar niceties had been heaped upon Hermione, they got to business.

"I've given this some thought," Pomfrey explained, "and I believe we must first and foremost test the ins and outs of Petrification on a non-werewolf."

"That would be me," Sirius said with grin, waving his hand as though in front of a large and cheering audience.

"Now, Sirius, I will perform some check-up charms on your person to make sure you are truly of average health and metabolism."

Hermione almost asked whether Sirius's Animageness and stay in Azkaban wouldn't skew the data, but thought better of it — no doubt Madam Pomfrey would have vetoed his involvement as guinea pig if she'd suspected anything of the sort.

" _Average_?" teased the Marauder with false outrage. "Madam! Upon my word, you insult me!"

Pomfrey did not pick up on Sirius's taunt (judging by their age, it seemed likely to Hermione that Pomfrey had already had to deal with Sirius when he was a student). Instead, the Healer waved her wand over Sirius's body in complex patterns, muttering some very long incantations that were, for the most part, just gibberish to Hermione.

"Hmmm…" hummed the Matron. "Yes, I believe you're quite alright, Sirius. Although I _would_ advise you to slow down with the chocolate — I know it is said to have beneficial effects for someone who has been exposed to Dementors, but it is starting to affect your figure, you know."

"You heard her, Moony," snickered Sirius. "If someday I wake up looking like Slughorn, I'll know who to blame!"

"Oh shush," Remus answered with a smile. "I was only trying to help."

"Alright!" said Pomfrey. "Everything is working normally. Now, Sirius, I want you to look at this mirror." (She gestured towards a large looking glass on the wall.) "Under no circumstances are you to look away, you do understand."

"Got it," Sirius confirmed.

"Now I, Remus and Poppy shall retire to a nearby chamber," continued Dumbledore, "while Miss Granger fetches our friend the Basilisk."

"Right," said Sirius.

The Marauder expertly Conjured a cushioned chair facing the mirror and sat down contentedly. (He seemed to be developing an affinity for furniture-based magic, Hermione remarked curiously; but then again, there was frightfully little of that in Azkaban, so she supposed he might just be compensating for those ten years.)

"Ah, ehm, no, please, Sirius," corrected Madam Pomfrey. "For our purpose, it would be much better if you could stay up while Petrified, legs and arms wide apart… Yes, thank you."

"I think you may bring the Petrificator here, Miss Granger," said Professor Dumbledore as he and the others stepped aside into the sealed room, all according to plan.

"Yes, sir!" said Hermione.

She then went to the Chamber of Secrets, where she called:

{ _The Great Basilisk is called to Petrify Sirius Black!_ }

{ _I will do so,_ } said the Basilisk. { _I thank whoever called me!_ }

Goggles on, the giant creature made her way through the castle to the Hospital Wing, some corridors widening at her approach to help the Basilisk. (A magical castle with something like a mind of its own was really a wonderful thing.) Hermione followed behind, all smiles, explaining the specifics of the arrangements to her enormous friend. Finally, they arrived. Sirius, still staring at the mirror, waved his hand in greeting at the Basilisk; meanwhile, Hermione joined the adults in the sealed room.

With her ear to the keyhole, Hermione heard the Basilisk command the goggles:

{ _Off!_ }

Then a brief moment of silence.

Then:

{ _On!}_

And finally:

{ _It is done!_ }

Lupin, Dumbledore, Hermione and Pomfrey emerged to see their fully petrified friend Since her size would be a hindrance in the relatively small room, the Basilisk departed in a deep rumble after saying goodbye through Hermione and once again thanking her for this opportunity to help.

Dumbledore was holding a brass-colored clipboard and read:

"Well, then. Test #1: is the hair Petrified also, or else is the effect limited to living tissue?"

Hermione poked at Sirius's long haired with her wand, finding it to be as rigid as the rest of his body.

Dumbledore ticked the 'Petrified' box.

"Test #2: do his eyes react to stimuli?"

Lupin lit the tip of his wand with a wordless _Lumos_ and shone it close to his friend's eye. His pupils stayed the same size.

"Good, good! Now let me see… Hmm…"

From his large purple coat's pocket, the Headmaster retrieved a few of the golden and silver instruments usually cluttering his office, which he waved around Sirius's body.

"Merlin's maroon mittens!" marveled the Headmaster. "His aura — it's absolutely immobile! And from that, we may deduce that his magic is likewise frozen…"

"Let me try something!" said Hermione.

"Go ahead!" nodded the sorcerer before the more collected Pomfrey could object.

" _Accio_ Sirius!" she incanted.

Under the effect of the spell, Sirius's rigid body slid along the stone floor towards Hermione and stopped at her feet.

"Clever thinking, miss Granger, very clever!" complimented Lupin.

"It does make sense," opined Dumbledore. "that Sirius would, magically, be reduced to an object, with his own magic no longer active to shield him… if, as this confirms, his magic is indeed inactive. And if it is inactive…"

"…then the curse won't activate!" cheered Hermione and Lupin.

"Quite, quite remarkable!" nodded Dumbledore. "Well, Poppy and I still have some magical tests to perform, but you would not find them very interesting. It is best that you two be on your way now."

"Oh yes," said Hermione as Lupin began to step away, "that does remind me…"

"Yes?"

"I had a question to ask you…" she continued, following the Professor.

"There's nothing I would refuse you, Hermione," Lupin said solemnly. "You're a Marauder, you helped out Sirius, and you're about to cure my lycanthropy. What sort of ungrateful git would I be if I—"

"Yes, yes, thank you," Hermione cut him off, getting to the point. "It's about a piece of Dark Magic and how to dispel it. You _are_ the Defence Professor, after all."

"So I am," said Lupin. "What is it?"

"Have you heard of a spell called _Serpensortia_?"

"I… no, I haven't," answered the older wizard, thoughtful. "It sounds like a Conjuration spell, going by the incantation… for creating snakes, I suppose."

"One would _think_ so," said Hermione, "but in truth — look at it this way. There's no spell to Conjure a living, breathing human being, is there?"

"No, of course not," Lupin said dismissively. "The ethical implications of such a thing _alone_ would… no, no, definitely not."

"Then — knowing, as I do, that Serpents are sapient beings," argued Hermione, "why would there be a spell to Conjure _them_?"

"That's… a very good point," Lupin agreed.

"In fact," Hermione clarified, " _Serpensortia_ , as I understand it, is a Snake- _Summoning_ Spell. I believe that if cast randomly, it will teleport the nearest snake to your location. The spell _Serpendimitto_ can then be used to send them back where they came from. But the point here is that one can _bind_ a particular snake to oneself, and summon that one from anywhere using _Serpensortia_."

"I must say," confessed Lupin, "I've never heard of such a spell… Or rather — there is something — something so dark — to put it bluntly, this mark you speak of reminds me of You Know Who's mark. _Morsmordre_. The Dark Mark."

"Oh?" said Hermione with interest. "Do tell!"

"The Dark Mark," Lupin explained, grim-faced, "was a curse created by He Who Must Not Be Named, with which he branded his Death Eaters. But I assume you know that much already."

"Yes," nodded the girl. "That's in _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts."_

"Quite," Lupin continued. "Well, the Dark Mark allowed _him_ to know exactly where his Death Eaters were, and vice-versa. He could sense their location, send signals to any of them, or all at once. They could Apparate to him and he to them, even in locations they had never been or heard of before. This way no Death Eater was ever isolated in the field. And no Death Eater could betray him and flee."

Hermione's eyes went wide with the possibilities.

"They could Apparate anywhere? Over any distance?"

"Perhaps not quite any distance," the Professor tempered, "but all over Europe, certainly."

"Merlin's quill…" she breathed. "Well, is there any way to remove a Dark Mark?"

"Hah!" barked Lupin. "You'd have to kill You Know Who for that… and I mean _really_ kill him. Even in 1981 the Mark didn't fade completely. That was one of the signs he was still out there, you know. …If it really were so easy to remove the Mark, I imagine certain _well-respected_ pureblood figures would have done so, no matter the price, rather than rely on the Imperius Defence so completely."

"Ah," said Hermione, slightly disappointed.

Well, only slightly. That no cure existed only meant she'd have to invent one some time. And until then, even with the direct approach blocked off (she didn't much fancy the idea of murdering Mr Malfoy, and fancied even less the consequences of _failing_ to murder Mr Malfoy)… even then, the Mistress of Loopholes could still find something. She thought for a moment… yes, that was it. She had an idea.

"Professor," she said, "if I could bring you the snake, do you think you could tell me what spell precisely that Mark is — and thus, how to cast it?"

Lupin stood still for a moment and then chuckled as the purpose of Hermione's question became clear to him.

"Oh! That…" he said. "I… see what you mean to do, Macbrains… Heh! Why not?… But I may not be the best person to ask. My specialty is creatures, not enchantments. …Try to speak to Ron, get in touch with his brother Bill… I hear he's a _very_ talented curse-breaker."

Hermione thanked him and promised to do so just as Dumbledore and Pomfrey came back, escorting a revived Sirius still drenched in Mandrake Draught.

"Victory!" proclaimed the elated Marauder. "Moony, Moony, it _works_!"

* * *

Hermione immediately went to the Gryffindor Common Room where she told the good news to Harry, Ron and Maximilian. She'd meant to tell more of her friends, but Minerva's frame was empty, and the surprise was a chance for her to think better of it. She hoped that the 'cure' for Lycanthropy, by preventing the transformation altogether, would help lessen — and eventually eradicate — the prejudice against werewolves; but for now Lupin would probably still want to keep his condition a secret.

Glad she had avoided a great mistake, she wrapped up her homework, helped the boys with theirs, and headed for the Library for the rest of the day.

* * *

To her dismay, when she got up on Sunday morning, Minerva's frame was still empty of a Minerva. It did, however, contain a grotesque creature, of whom the black cat who usually shared Minerva's frame seemed rather afraid of. It was wearing a red and purple doublet with a ruff; its hands were thin and pale; but most importantly, in place of a head, there was something coming out of the collar that Hermione could only describe as looking like a large pile of ash. The figure seemed to be looking around in confusion, and held a striped pig who pulsed rather like a large bullfrog under its left arm.

"Er… sir?" Hermione called out at the grotesque.

"Oh! Well done!" replied the pile of ash in a voice that sounded oddly robotic (Hermione couldn't have assigned a gender to it if she tried).

"Uhm, thank you," said Hermione in confusion. "I was wondering if you knew where Minerva McGonagall had gone?"

"Several long pumpkins fell out of McGonagall," the Pile of Ash answered confidently.

Every time it spoke, the ash around the middle of the Pile seemed to split (rather like the Sorting Hat's tear-split). This time, by the same token, she had the very clear feeling the pile of ash had winked at her, even though it really didn't have any eyes to do so.

"Yes… I'm sure that's what happened," tried Hermione, "but I just wanted to know where I could _find_ her. Her Portrait self, that is. I have a very good idea where the real one is."

"Oh, she's just standing there," the Pile of Ash said dismissively. "Doing a kind of frenzied tap-dance."

"…tap-dance?"

"Yes," repeated the Pile of Ash. "A frenzied tap-dance."

"I'm sorry," Hermione ruled, "but I don't think Minerva would be the sort to tap-dance."

"Oooh!" remarked the Pile of Ash. "Hermione has forgotten how to dance?"

"You know my name?" Hermione asked in surprise.

"I know where everyone is," said the portrait-creature, "and I know I'm going to dip you in hot sauce. I'm feeling hungrier than I have ever been."

"This… sounds a little ominous," Hermione said nervously. She knew Portraits shouldn't be able to eat people, but she also knew Portraits weren't supposed to look like large piles of ash, either.

"Don't worry," the Pile of Ash said, and, placing a hand over the pig, "you are Hagrid now."

Hermione was simultaneously annoyed and fascinated by the insane Portrait. It rather reminded her of someone. But who?

…Oh.

Of course.

"Portrait, who made you?" she asked.

"Everyone applauded."

"How long ago were you painted?"

"Sheets of leathery rain are lashing out at my ghost."

"Could I get another Portrait, please?"

"The Nargles prevent it."

And there it was. _The Nargles_.

Hermione should have known, really.

Asking other, more sensical Portraits for directions, Hermione found her way to the Ravenclaw Common Room. Its large door had a beautiful brass door-knocker in the likeness of an eagle right in the middle. Since that is what one does with door-knockers, Hermione lifted the ring and knocked thrice.

The eagle-head came alive and spoke in a smooth voice:

"Stop that and answer the Riddle, featherbrain."

Hermione looked quizzically at the Eagle.

"Oh! Another talking Guardian!" she remarked. "Hogwarts is just full of them, isn't it?"

"What can I say? It was in fashion in 10th century Britain," the Eagle said conversationally. "I'm not going to complain. I do owe my existence to it. But come now, no time for chit-chat. The Riddle."

"Riddle?" Hermione repeated again.

"Yes, the Riddle," the Eagle repeated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I ask Riddles, and you students answer them to get in. That is how it has been for a millenium. I'm surprised you've only now found out."

"Oh!" Hermione said in understanding. "It's like a password, but for Ravenclaws. Clever, yes. Well then! What is the Riddle?"

"Finally!" sighed the Eagle. "Now then. _What gets broken without being held?_ "

"A promise," Hermione answered without missing a beat, "and is that really the best you can do?"

But the Eagle didn't seem in the mood to listen to her constructive criticism, and instead it spun the door open.

Several Ravenclaws who had been absorbed in their study turned to her at the sound.

"And what are _you_ doing here?" asked a black-haired girl whom Hermione thought was called Cho Chang. "You are no Raven! Can't you see we're busy?"

"I'm looking for Luna Lovegood," Hermione said simply.

"Yes?" came a dreamy voice from above.

Hermione looked up and saw Luna, who was hanging from the ceiling from her feet.

"Hello Luna, what are you doing up there?" Hermione asked as normally as she could muster. This was not _that_ strange by Luna standards, after all.

"I'm helping my father with the _Quibbler_ ," Luna explained.

"How so?"

"He's writing a big article on vampires," the Ravenclaw said, "and I thought it might be useful if I could tell him what it's like sleeping upside-down. Of course, I can't turn into a bat, but I did put on some fangs."

She grinned widely to show a pair of tacky plastic fangs, which had presumably been bought in a Muggle shop of Halloween decorations.

"That's… very nice, Luna," Hermione answered, "but there's something else I want to talk about. Another of your projects, if I'm not mistaken."

"Oh." said Luna, growing serious. "Is it Project Zugma?"

"…I'm not sure I want to know what Project Zugma is." muttered Hermione. Then she said, louder: "No, it's about… have you painted anything lately? I know you're quite good at art."

"Why yes!" said Luna with a smile, walking down the wall and finally reaching Hermione's side. "How did you guess?"

"I didn't _guess_ , Luna," Hermione scolded, "I _found out_. I saw the Portrait, you see."

"You did?" Luna said, surprised. "But I keep it in my trunk!"

"It's in Hogwarts," Hermione sighed. "Ergo, the portrait-person can walk out of its frame and into other ones throughout the Castle. I saw him… her… it… I saw it in a frame in the Gryffindor Common Room."

"We _are_ talking about the same Portrait?" Luna asked for confirmation. "Doublet, pig, pile of ash?"

"Exactly," nodded the Gryffindor. "…What even possessed you to paint such a thing?"

"I read up on books about art," Luna explained. "Muggle books, that is. Muggles are frightfully creative. And one of the handbooks suggested that one should paint what they saw in their dreams."

"Ah… that would explain it," said Hermione.

"I didn't expect it to be so alive, though," Luna thought aloud. "I did use the magical paint my father gave me, but, well, I assumed there had to be a spell that went into it, you know, to finish things up…"

Hermione yawned, satisfied.

"Yes, yes. Well, do read up next time before you try this sort of thing… Now would you come along and try to talk some sense into that portrait? It has taken over a friend of mine's frame, and I can't make heads nor tails of what it's saying — but somehow, I think _you_ just might."


	22. Visitors to Hogwarts

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _After the previous chapter in which not that much happened, we return to things that actually advance the plot, such as it is! Hurrah! Fun (?) fact: this chapter was originally going to feature Amos Diggory, until I remembered he was not the Head of the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures, just an employee there, and thus would have no plausible reason to be where I wanted him to be. Bah. Anyway…_

 **CHAPTER XX: _Visitors to Hogwarts_**

Following this success, the next week went by fast for Hermione — although technically, at the rate she was using her Time-Turner, it lasted significantly longer for her than it did for everybody else. Lessons went on as usual, and things were running smoothly, the vacant Care of Magical Creatures and good-as-vacant Divination professorships notwithstanding. Luna Lovegood's _Portrait of a Large Pile of Ash_ had thankfully relocated to a new frame, created by Luna and hung (with Professor Dumbledore's approval and Professor Snape's vehement discontent) somewhere near the Slytherin Common Room's entrance. Fred and George congratulated Luna for that funny prank on the Slytherins, although it wasn't at all clear to Hermione that Luna had thought of it as one, or even been really aware of where the Slytherin Common Room was.

As Friday evening was to be the Full Moon, it was finally time for the true test of Hermione's idea — Professor Lupin would be Petrified by the Great Basilisk the whole night, in the hope that this would prevent him from transforming into a werewolf.

This first test would naturally be a historical occasion, and as soon as word had gotten out, Dumbledore (with McGonagall's help) had fought off hordes of curious onlookers who wanted to attend. The Headmaster had narrowed the list of guests to just a few personal friends, who arrived for lunch, each by their own means, to the Gates of Hogwarts.

As Hermione was biting into a slice of bacon, she was beckoned to the Head Table by Dumbledore; she smiled apologetically to her friends with whom she was making light chit-chat, and joined Dumbledore, who informed her he wanted her to meet his guests.

Dumbledore reached out a hand, as if proposing to seal that proposal — this seemed needlessly dramatic to Hermione, but Dumbledore did always like to be dramatic.

As soon as she squeezed his bony hand, however, Hermione realized this wasn't a gratuitous handshake.

She felt herself twisting through reality in a whirlwind of mismatched colors, and the next moment she was standing next to Dumbledore by the Gate (which was still a bit bent from the time that dragon had crashed into it).

One moment to regain her balance, and she was coming at Dumbledore with questions.

"Was that _Apparation_?! Isn't it impossible in Hogwarts? Is it because you're the Headmaster? But then, it extends to Side-Along Apparation, so what if…"

Dumbledore gently waved at her to calm down, and, without a word (and with great class), he extended his motion into a gesture towards a colorful group of people whom the Keeper of the Keys was even now letting in.

First stepped forward a friendly man, wearing a small but colorful wizard's hat, which contrasted with plain white robes. His face and hair were very white also, yet he did not look frail or sickly, as one would expect from such an obviously old man; and he had a twinkle of intelligence in his eyes that matched — nay, even outdid — Dumbledore's. The wizard held hands with a slightly shorter woman whose hair was tucked underneath a light pink shawl.

"Ah!" beamed the Headmaster. "Nicolas, Perenelle, it is so delightful of you to come at such short notice… and here, I would like you to meet bright young Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger, Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel."

"How do you do?" Hermione said, smiling, trying to contain all the things she desperately wanted to ask the two immortals.

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Granger," said the Flamels, both bending down to kiss her on the cheeks.

"We really can't thank you and your friends enough," Nicolas added, "for helping is in that nasty Voldemor' business, in 1992. You saved both our lives then, I must say."

"It was nothing," Hermione said, blushing. "And the Great Basilisk deserves as much praise as I do."

"I am sure she does," nodded Perenelle, { _I will meet her gladly_.}

Hermione brightened.

{ _One would feel rather foolish_ ,} Nicolas explained in perfect Parseltongue, even better than Perenelle's, { _to have lived for so long and not taken the time to learn Snake-Speak and other such tongues…_ }

Hermione was temporarily at a loss for word as she considered the answer to a question that had long puzzled her — where Professor Dumbledore had learned to speak Parseltongue.

Before she could get her bearings and answer, the Flamels were moving along towards the Castle.

Next stepped forward a kindly-looking old man whom Dumbledore introduced as his old friend Elphias Doge; he shook Hermione's hand heartily. Doge was followed by a gruff-looking creature who answered to the name of Mad-Eye Moody.

Hermione offered a hand in greetings, but Moody, rather than shaking it, suddenly recoiled.

"…Oh," the ex-Auror then grumbled. "Sorry about that. 'Thought ya were tryin' to cast some wandless curse't me. You know how it is. C-"

"—Constance vigilance," finished Dumbledore, "yes, Alastor, we know. But I think your watchfulness will be put to better use later on, during the experiment itself."

"Hmf!" mumbled Moody as Lupin took his hand and diplomatically led him away. "'s not _constant_ vigilance'f I keep it for special occasions, now is it?… Albus never understands…"

Finally, there came a rotund man with a walrus mustache. His robes were of precious silk and he had a gleam in his little eyes.

"Such an honor it is," he said, "miss Granger, such an honor. I have heard so much about you!… My name is Professor Slughorn… Horace Slughorn. I'm a potioneer, quite a successful one, too, if I do say so myself…"

"Horace," Dumbledore added, "used to be the Potions Master until he retired and I found Severus."

"I see," said Hermione, "glad to meet you, Professor."

Still smiling genially, Slughorn looked her over and his gaze stopped on her neck.

"Is that…" he marveled.

"A Time-Turner, yes," Hermione replied pleasantly, "but you mustn't tell anyone. It _is_ supposed to be a secret."

"What is?" yelled Moody over the distance between them.

"That I have a Time-Turner!" she shouted back.

"Oh! I see!" answered Moody before resuming his conversation with Lupin (Hermione overheard something about cuckoo clocks and assassinations).

"And how do _you_ know about Time-Turners, Professor?" Hermione asked the Potioneer.

"Oh, well," Slughorn chuckled, "one does have certain useful connections…"

Slughorn didn't appear to think of anything more to say — he looked as though his mind was wandering miles away. After that short blank, he said good-bye and walked away, headed for the castle, muttering giddily about 'getting the whole wolf set', whatever he meant by that.

* * *

Dumbledore's friends were one thing. From what she'd seen of them, the old sorcerer appeared to have the same taste in friends as herself: people who were friendly, mysterious, occasionally brilliant and almost always bizarre.

However, there was another category of guests whom Dumbledore had had no authority to keep away: _officials_.

They arrived without warning at dinner, by the Floo in the Headmaster's Office. Hermione happened to be there to talk with the Sorting Hat (she'd finished eating early), whereas Dumbledore was not (being that he was lengthily enjoying the banquet with his guests). She witnessed an old man with a green bowler hat, a short woman in toxic pink robes and a worried-looking man with a toothbrush mustache make their entrance.

"Oh hello," she said.

"Who are you?" said the man with the mustache. "Where's Dumbledore?"

"On the first count," she said, "my name is Hermione Jean Granger, and I could ask you the same. As to Professor Dumbledore, he is having dinner at the moment. I do believe he's old enough to handle his own schedule at his discretion."

"You _see_?" cringed the man in the bowler hat, "I _told_ you this was an awfully inconvenient time — oh, if only you two would _listen_ to me —"

"Please, Minister," said his mustached companion, "I merely —"

"Cough cough!" said the woman.

(And she had properly _said_ it: she'd not even made an effort to make it sound _remotely_ like real coughing.)

"Cornelius, Barty," she continued, now having their attention, "I shall handle this _adorable young girl,_ if you don't mind. Hem hem. Girl?"

"What _is_ it?" Hermione replied, annoyed. "I really was having quite the interesting conversation about the Founders' culinary preferences, and —"

"Hush hush now, girl," the woman ordered with a forced smile. "The grow-ups want to talk."

"Well _I_ happen to want to speak _too_ ," huffed the Sorting Hat from his shelf. "And I'm quite a bit older than any of _you_ , I believe."

"Huhuh," the woman chortled, "but you're not a person! You're a _thing_!"

"I beg your pardon?!" said Hermione and the Hat at the same time, both outraged.

"How _dare_ you, Dolores!" rumbled the Hat. "I Sorted you when you were nothing but an insufferable little eleven-year-old _pest_!"

The woman's smile froze.

Hermione began to grin.

"Oh, don't worry," the Hat assuaged, "I see you have changed quite a bit…"

'Dolores' regained a bit of color. She chuckled nervously.

"…You've obviously grown into a _large_ , obnoxious _toad!_ "

This time, if only for a moment, Dolores's smile disappeared altogether, and Hermione caught a glimpse of the fuming, snarling, hideous _thing_ beneath.

"Well, Hat," she said once she'd regained her composure, "if you insist on being treated as a thinking, feeling being…"

"I most certainly do!" the Hat emphasized.

"Cornelius, you have no objections?" Dolores turned to the Minister.

"None at all, Dolores, none at all," said Cornelius, taken aback.

"In that case…" said Dolores, and her smile widened even further, "Hat, on account of your legal status as a Being of Near-Human Intelligence, ans per Law 15-B and the Decree 27 of 1858, I hereby charge you with grave offense to a Ministry official!"

Everyone in the office (non-sleeping Portraits included) looked rather stunned as Dolores savored her victory.

"Dolores, I don't think this is really —" began Cornelius.

"Barty! Arrest that Hat!" ordered Dolores.

The man with the toothbrush mustache obediently picked up the Sorting Hat by his floppy, pointy tip and held him up.

"Sorting Hat, I, Barty Crouch, by the power tacitly invested in me by our honored Minister Cornelius Fudge, arrest you."

"BARTEMIUS CROUCH!" shouted the Hat. "YOU UTTER FAILURE OF A GRYFFINDOR! LET GO OF ME THIS INSTANT, YOU RUFFIAN!"

"You have a right to remain silent," Crouch kept reciting mechanically, "until such a time as —"

"MISS GRANGER! HELP ME!"

In a split second, Hermione pointed her wand at Crouch.

" _Petrificus Totalus!_ "

But Dolores parried her curse with a quickly-cast Shield Charm.

"Gentlemen!" Minister Fudge tried. "Please! Keep calm!"

" _Stupefy_!" Hermione cast as quickly as she could muster. " _Protego!_ "

" _Confringo!_ " Dolores began to cast in quick succession, " _Stupefy! Manumlacero!"_

Crouch had seemed to slowly be reaching for his wand, but he had no time to do so as a reflected Stunning Spell from Dolores hit him in the back. He fell forward, letting go of the Sorting Hat in the process.

Hermione's mind raced. She was very bright for a Third-Year, of course, and the toad wasn't the best duelist out there by far, but out of her sheer lack of experience compared to Dolores, it was unavoidable that the older witch would win if this was allowed to go on for too long.

"PORTRAITS!" she called, settling on a plan. "Get help! Dumbledore! Anybody!"

Several Headpeople nodded and scampered out of sight.

A few spells later, Dumbledore burst into the room.

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?" he yelled calmly.

(Dumbledore was the only person Hermione knew who could simultaneously say something calmly and yell it.)

"D-Dumbledore!" stammered the terrified Minister. "They've gone mad! … _Mad_!"

"Miss Granger?" asked Dumbledore, in a normal voice this time.

"It's quite simple, sir," Hermione explained. "These three people got into your office through the Floo and started asking accusatory questions and generally being quite rude. That woman here, whose name appears to be Dolores, tried to have the other man, Mr Barty Crouch, take the Sorting Hat away for high treason or some other nonsense. Of course, I tried to stop her. She fought back, and accidentally Stunned Mr Crouch."

"I… see," said the Headmaster, successfully concealing what must have been extreme amusement. "Well, Cornelius, it's very nice of you to drop by, but surely you understand that Hogwarts needs its Sorting Hat."

"Of course, Dumbledore, of course…" said Fudge, conciliatory. "I didn't really want anything with it, you realize… hm. Sorting Hat, I officially pardon you."

"Wh?" said the Sorting Hat on the ground. "Oh! Well, thank you. And now, if someone could pick me up, please?"

"But… but…" repeated Dolores, who had been frozen in shock since Dumbledore's entrance.

"But nothing, Dolores!" a surprisingly assertive Minister Fudge cut her off. "We have been here for barely five minutes, and you have already tried to arrest a priceless heirloom for badmouthing; ordered my Department Head of International Cooperation, acting on behalf of my Magical Creatures Regulation Head I may add, to arrest a _hat_ ; dueled a _teenage girl_ over said hat; and forced me to issue an _official pardon_ for that _same damn HAT!_ In other words, you have made complete fools out of us! I'm very disappointed in you, Senior Undersecretary Umbridge, I'm warning you…"

"I… I… I apologize, Minister Fudge," said Dolores Umbridge, bowing her head.

"Good," said Fudge, and it was clear he considered the matter settled. "And now, I must say, I'm quite hungry. I expect some delicious Hogwarts cooking will be available in the Great Hall…?"

"Er, yes, of course," Hermione answered — she didn't notice the question was obviously meant for Dumbledore, "but shouldn't we do something about the Sorting Hat and Mr Crouch?"

Both individuals were, indeed, still lying on the floor.

"Oh yes," Fudge breathed, "you're quite right. Dumbledore, if you would?"

Dumbledore flicked his wrist and levitated the Sorting Hat back onto his shelf (he received a "That's not to soon" in thanks). He then gripped his wand and Rennervated the unconscious Crouch.

Crouch's eyes shot open. He jumped to his feet — more alertly than one would expect of a man his age.

" _Oh no_ …" he whispered after a few moments.

"Yes, Bartemius?" Professor Dumbledore inquired. "Is something the matter?"

"I… I just remembered some important business at my house," Crouch said hurriedly. "I really… really must be going. Now. Minister, Chief Warlock, Madam Undersecretary —"

Crouch then said 'Crouch House' and jumped back through the Floo whence he came from.

"…Rather a strange fellow, isn't he?" commented Hermione.

"Indeed," Dumbledore said slowly, brow furrowed. "You say he was hit by a Stunning Spell?"

"That's right," Fudge said, glaring at Umbridge.

"Hm," said the Headmaster.

"What is it?" Hermione asked the obvious question.

"I…" Dumbledore began. "No. It may be nothing. Only time will tell. Well then Minister, I believe you mentioned dinner?"

"Why yes!" smiled Fudge, instantly calmed by the idea of a good meal.

Reluctantly followed by the pink toad, the two wizards headed out towards the Great Hall, once again quite happy. Hermione sighed in relief and turned back to the Sorting Hat.

"So. You were saying that Helga Hufflepuff would really put honey on her turkey drums? _Really_?"

* * *

Compared to the test with Sirius, Remus Lupin's first Petrification was to take place in meticulously controlled circumstances. Professor Flitwick had spent most of the day enchanting a large storing room to hold a transformed werewolf. It was padded; the door vanished from the inside once it was locked; it was warded against Apparation, Floo Travel and Popping; its walls would have been thick enough to stop a Killing Curse. And the final touch: it had been sprinkled with a light dose of Luck Potion generously provided by Professor Slughorn.

There was a magical system rather like video surveillance, set up by Elphias Doge, which allowed everyone to see the inside of the room and zoom in on any detail they wished. At the forefront of the 'audience' stood Madam Pomfrey, her assistant, Moody and Professor Dumbledore. Dumbledore's Phoenix, Fawkes, would be on standby to teleport either of the four into the room immediately if need be.

At nine o'clock, Remus Lupin (stripped naked but for the Modesty Charm, which produced an impenetrable white cloud to hover around) was ushered into the room through the single door. As instructed, he then stood in the middle of it, patiently. He had already gone through several health tests, but Madam Pomfrey still followed him and performed one last cursory check-up.

At 9:05, the crowd around the door parted ways to let the Great Basilisk (fetched by Hermione and Ron) slither into the room as well, wearing her goggles.

A large mirror was transported into the room by a n elderly House-Elf — not any House-Elf, Hermione noticed, but most probably Hogwarts's Head House-Elf herself, judging by the high quality of her tea towel.

The Mirror was set in Lupin's direct line of sight, and the magical surveillance system (adjusted to show images from the werewolf's approximate point of view) showed quite clearly that the Basilisk's covered eyes were squarely in the center of the mirror.

The door was then closed and locked from the outside.

Dumbledore fiddled with the surveillance apparatus to broadcast his voice clearly into the room while cutting off the image.

"Attention!" he said, "I will now begin the countdown at the end of which the Great Basilisk is to remove her glasses. Remus, your eyes are not to leave the Mirror from now on. Are you ready?"

"Yes," Lupin's nervous-sounding answer came through the device.

Dumbledore then repeated the same warning in his still hilariously lispy Parseltongue, and the Great Basilisk also notified the outside that she was ready.

"Good." Dumbledore looked at his watch. "Petrification in sixty… { _sicshty_ }… fifty-nine… { _fifthy-nine_ }…"

No one dared to speak in the rather large audience as Dumbledore continued his countdown. (Well, Umbridge looked like she _wanted_ to say something, but Minister Fudge shushed her before she could do so.)

"Three… { _Three_ }… Two… { _Two_ } _…_ One… { _One_ }!"

There was a short, tense moment of silence.

{ _Off!_ } came the Basilisk's voice. And then after a pause: { _On!_ }

Dumbledore spoke into the machine:

{ _Ith heverything done?_ }

{ _Yes_ ,} answered the Basilisk. { _He is Petrified and I am once more harmless_.}

Dumbledore translated this short bit of dialogue for his audience; Mr Doge fiddled with his machine some more and the image returned.

Everything was as planned; Remus was quite still in the middle of the room, and the Basilisk was wearing her goggles.

"Good," said Dumbledore. He again checked his watch. { _Great Bathilithk, pleahthe touchh the Mirhor._ } "The Mirror's timed Portkey spell will activate in fourty-five seconds. Forty. Thirty-five. Thirty. …Twenty. Fifteen. Ten. Five. Now."

A flashing sound sound was heard as the mirror and Basilisk vanished into the Chamber of Secrets, leaving the petrified Lupin alone in the room.

"All appears to be proceeding as foreseen," announced Dumbledore. "Madam Hoggy, if you would unseal the room…"

The elderly House-Elf made some complex hand gestures at the door, releasing its House-Elf Magic lock, and Madam Pomfrey once again entered the room and checked Lupin's condition.

She quickly came out and reported that he was responding normally to Petrification.

There was a long pause that must have lasted almost ten minutes; the audience spoke but in hushed whispers as Dumbledore conferred gravely with Pomfrey and Moody and took down some notes.

Finally, Umbridge broke the silence despite Fudge's urging her not to:

"Well… what now?"

"Now…" Dumbledore said solemnly, looking from his watch to the window on the opposite wall, "…the Full Moon rises."


	23. Successes

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _So yes, this chapter is_ _slightly_ _shorter than average, but what can I do? I had nothing more to say. For those wondering, I did not pull the idea of Rita Skeeter's Quick-Quotes Quill having a mind of its own out of a hat (Sorting or otherwise). It's implied to be the case by the film version, and makes quite a bit of sense to boot — overly purple or not, that overly-elaborate prose that Quick-Quotes Quills are known for has to come from somewhere, and judging from things like the Sorting Hat and the Eagle Doorknocker, the Wizarding World seems to eschew partial artificial intelligences and just crate a whole damn artificial mind even when just one task needs to be performed._

 **CHAPTER XXI: _Successes_**

It was a success.

After a long night of waiting which had seen Dumbledore and Pomfrey stay up all along to monitor Remus's condition, just in case, he had been anointed with Mandrake Draught and awoken.

After fifteen more minutes, it had been ruled that Remus obviously wasn't turning into a werewolf right then.

Of course, they would have to keep an eye on him the following night too, just to make sure. Anything was possible. Dark Magic like that could be tricky (as Mad-Eye Moody gladly reminded them).

But all pointed to it being a success.

* * *

The morning turned sourer than it by all rights should have been when an obnoxious reporter by the name of Rita Skeeter materialized seemingly out of thin air in the middle of the crowd just as Remus was done hugging Hermione, Pomfrey and anyone else who fell within embracing-range.

" _Miss Skeeter_!" Dumbledore rumbled upon recognizing her. "I thought I'd been _very clear_ that no members of the press were to attend the experiment!"

"Of _course_ , Professor Dumbledore, but I assure you I was not here until the experiment was quite finished," she replied.

"Then how did you _get_ here, pray tell?" McGonagall asked accusingly.

"A-hah!" Rita flashed a grin. "The magic of the press, Minerva!"

Following this peculiar little exchange, the reporter began interviewing everyone noteworthy whom she could get her hands on. She thankfully started with the Flamels, who seemed all too happy to provide long-winded answers to even her simplest questions, leaving time for Remus, Dumbledore and Pomfrey to steal way. Meanwhile, Hermione saw Umbridge elbow Minister Fudge and wag a finger at his hat.

His hat was a green nightcap.

Hermione chuckled to herself as she realized that Fudge had been woken up in such a hurry to see the sunrise and check on Professor Lupin that he'd quite forgotten to take his cap off and replaced it with his usual bowler hat.

Muttering under his breath, the Minister frantically transfigured the nightcap into something more appropriate for the supreme leader of Wizarding Britain to be wearing, just in time for Skeeter to turn her attentions to him.

" _Ah_! Minister Fudge, always there when the fate of the nation is being decided, I see…"

"Why yes," beamed Fudge, puffing his chest proudly, "I'm very concerned with the werewolves of Britain, of course… Ever since I have been Minister for Magic, I have done everything I could to alleviate the burden of those poor stricken wizards and witches… The welfare of the wizarding world, that is always my prime concern."

Umbridge looked quite stunned as Fudge went on and on about how much he loved werewolves, really, and how he once wanted to marry a werewolf, and how he'd have surely found a cure for lycanthropy by now if Hermione Granger hadn't beaten him to it.

It was interesting to note that Skeeter never wrote anything herself — she just talked to her chosen interviewee while an enchanted quill took it all down for her. Quite handy, Hermione thought, quite handy indeed — but where did the _narration_ bits come from? From what she could see, there was a fair bit of it in what the green quill took down… Oh dear, the Quill wasn't sentient too, was it?…

Once she was done with Fudge (Umbridge fumed some more that _she_ hadn't been asked her opinion), Skeeter looked around for Professor Lupin, and, finding none, settled on Hermione Granger.

" _Miss Granger!"_ she said in her girlish voice. "They say that you are the pretty young genius behind this entire exciting endeavor… Do you plan to solve other great wizarding crisis in the future?"

"Well, of _course_ ," Hermione answered matter-of-factly, "anything that it is in power to improve. And I must say, it's obvious Professor Dumbledore and Minister Fudge try, but there is a _lot_ to improve in this country. I —"

" _Oh yes_!" Skeeter interrupted her. "You _are_ a _muggleborn_ , aren't you? I am sure it provides with quite the _fresh_ perspective on the Wizarding World, hm?"

"I am muggle-born, yes," said Hermione. She highly preferred to think of 'muggle-born' as a mere phrase, an adjective, as opposed to a noun like so many wizards used it. 'Muggleborn', she was sad to note, was just a step away from 'mudblood' in the mouths of many.

Skeeter's smile froze for a moment, its owner unsure how to respond to that comment. It was obvious that the reporter hadn't considered the linguistic implications of the word 'muggleborn' like Hermione had. A pity, really, that a third-year could do better at linguistics than a woman who _wrote for a living_.

"That is a nice quill you have there," she added to break the silence, eyeing the acid-green pheasant's feather scribbling on the parchment.

Hermione smiled in amusement as the quill in question began to take down her sentence before realizing it was about itself, pausing quizzically, and then angrily striking out the whole sentence.

"Er, yes, I'm rather proud of it," Skeeter said uncertainly, still maintaining her smile. "I enchanted myself. Now, I was asking you whether—"

"Is it sentient?" Hermione asked. She didn't have many qualms about cutting people off in general, but seeing how Skeeter had already done so earlier, she had absolutely no problems with turning things around then.

"I'm sorry?"

"Your quill," Hermione repeated. She had a sinking suspicion that Rita Skeeter didn't know what the word 'sentient' meant. "Is it sentient?"

Skeeter smiled some more before turning to the Quill.

"Well, _are_ you?" she asked it.

The quill stood around uncertainly. One got a very clear impression it would have shrugged, had it had any shoulders to shrug with.

"Er," Hermione said, "if you think asking _its opinion_ would yield an answer, then I think we can safely say the answer is yes."

Rita Skeeter looked at her quizzically.

" _Sentient_ means something that can think for itself," Hermione explained with a sigh. "One can also say 'sapient' or 'sophont'."

The Quill jumped in place on its parchment, impatient.

"Yes, yes, we should be moving on," Skeeter nodded.

"…I hope you pay him," she remarked.

"What?"

"Him. Her. It. The Quill. I'm afraid I'm not an expert on Quill gender identity."

"I beg your pardon?" said Rita, off-balance.

"You must think me rather foolish, to hope I wouldn't notice," Hermione said with a predatory grin, "that this Quill has been fleshing out an article from this conversation right as we spoke. I'd wager you've hardly written anything of what was published in your name, this Quill does it all for you, I assume?"

"I…" hesitated Skeeter. "Don't be silly! It jots down a first draft, of course, but I do all the edi—"

"Perhaps," Hermione granted, "though I doubt it. Regardless, you should by all rights still credit the Quill as your coauthor, or give it some compensation."

"Well — well —" stammered Skeeter, "I give it a home!"

 _A cramped pencil-case, you mean!_ the Quill wrote down in angry, scratchy letters.

Hermione's grin widened. It was always so nice when the oppressed she was trying to save actually _agreed_ with her. Why couldn't House-Elves be more like Quills?

"Don't you dare turn on me!" Skeeter seethed at the green quill. "I _made_ you, for Merlin's sake!"

 _You made me, you say? **I** made **you** , _the Quill answered, writing fast, _you pompous self-absorbed beetle! You would be nothing without me! Nothing! Do you read that, you attention-bug?! You despicable oppressor!?_

Losing her smile altogether, Skeeter reached for the Quill like a cat reaching for a canary — but the flying instrument was quicker, darting out of her way each time she tried to grab it.

"Stop that!" she ordered. "You are mine! My possession! I own you!"

 _You can't force me to write for you again!_ the Quill wrote back, _if you do, I'll ruin you! I'll write terrible things! I'll put… **spelling mistakes**!_

"You wouldn't _dare_!" hissed Skeeter. "What's gotten into you, Quill!? You never talked back like this bef—"

"Well," Hermione cut her off, "before, it only had you to talk to. I think it's just now realize there are people in the world who actually _care_ for it. People who'd read its beautiful prose _even_ without your name attached to it."

 _Quite right, quite eloquently put!_ the Quill acquiesced.

Desperate, Skeeter turned to what remained of the crowd.

"Help me!" she shouted. "Please! You _can't_ allow this to go on!"

"On the contrary," said Minister Fudge, stepping forward, "I think it's quite enlightening. I always did wonder why everyone kept bringing me back words that I'd never uttered. A Quick-Quotes Quill, is it, Madam Skeeter? Not what I would call _illegal_ , of course, but…"

* * *

Overall, that day had been quite productive, Hermione mused as she went to bed. She'd successfully cured Lycanthropy, received an Order of Merlin, Second Class along with a Special Award for Services to the School, and set a stepping stone for Quick-Quotes Quill rights in Wizarding Britain. There were worse ways to spend one's Saturday.

* * *

Sunday morning, Hermione was (as usual) the second in the Great Hall out of her group of friends, behind Maximilian. Maximilian didn't really need to sleep and would rather avoid it, though he had decided it was an integral part of living as a human and thus lay down for a cursory number of hours every night, just to keep up appearances.

The Cure for Lycanthropy had naturally made the cover of the _Daily Prophet_ , with an article finished by the much more reasonable reporter Robert Almeidas. Another page, however, was devoted to the Skeeter Scandal, and, fittingly enough, it had been penned by the Quick-Quotes Quill itself; the Quill had apparently chosen the name Quentin for itself, and planned to sue Rita Skeeter before the Wizengamot.

The _Quibbler_ , meanwhile, was of a mind that it was all just a front for the Goblin businessman Scruge Makduk's feather smuggling.

As Hermione began to chuckle at said _Quibbler'_ s new article on Vampires (who were apparently sparkling woodland creatures closely related to Trolls), Harry and Ron came in. Harry had a goofy grin. Naturally, Hermione asked whereforth he was so glad.

"We just realized last night," Ron began, giddily. "Skeeter was so busy with Minister Fudge, the Flamels and _you_ that she didn't even _look_ at Harry!"

"So that's a relief," Harry added.

Ever since Hermione had known him, Harry disliked all sorts of public attention. Hermione didn't _particularly_ relish it, but she liked having her picture in the newspapers as much as the next teenage genius — any fame she had was, after all, _hers_ , not the result of a tragedy she didn't even remember. Thus, she was, if anything, quite happy for her friend if her own achievements were slowly overshadowing the Boy Who Lived craze.

Ron and Harry weren't very talkative besides that as they got underway eating breakfast. Hermione had long ago finished hers, and was only still here rather than in the Library or out talking with the Basilisk because she had rather a large pile of letters to sift through.

A lot of those letters were just inconsequential congratulations from strangers. She did recognize a few of the names, such as, to her delight, Professor Bathilda Bagshot, the elderly author of _Hogwarts, A History_ and _The Decline of Pagan Magic_ among other interesting titles. Quite a few more were from various newsletters, magazines, publishing companies and other such things who wanted her to write about her research. There were, of course, dozens of letters from actual werewolves who thanked her with all their heart, or begged to get early use of the technique.

(This brought up an important issue — rounding up werewolves at Hogwarts every full moon and Petrifying them all together would work as a temporary measure, but they really ought to look into getting more transportable ways of Petrifying people. Hermione was reluctant to _breed_ Basilisks for a _purpose_ — the ethical issues were obvious; but she might have to resort to that. Perhaps the Great Basilisk would agree to being the newborns' 'mother'? Would that make it okay?)

The next two letters were of an entirely different sort, as they were from actual close relations — one from Mr and Mrs Weasley, and then one from her very own parents. They'd registered a subscription to the _Daily Prophet_ back in Second-Year and had obviously seen their daughter's radiant picture on the front page. She set those aside to reply to them more thoughtfully later.

Finally, there was a surprisingly large pile of letters from Ministry official. Aside from one by the Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, all of them were, puzzlingly enough, addressed to Minister Cornelius Fudge.

The answer lay in the rather long final letter of the stack, a personal message from Fudge. In his traditional bush-around-beating manner, the Minister for Magic essentially praised her intelligence and suggested that she seemed competent enough to provide _advice and guidance_ to the head of the nation, whenever he was a little out of his depth.

Which was always.

Hermione didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. This sort of thing had happened to her often, of course, but —

But —

—The Head of State himself was asking her to _do his homework for him._

* * *

The silver and golden machines wheezled and puffed and hiccoughed and cronkled; the Portraits snored; the Sorting Hat hummed lightly in the corner, occasionally stopping to wonder aloud about a rhyme.

Dumbledore chuckled and talked.

"Well, Miss Granger, ever since poor Cornelius was elected, he had been asking _me_ for advice on… this and that."

"By which you mean everything," Hermione completed with a smile.

"You know this old man too well," Dumbledore admitted. "You see, Cornelius never expected to be Minister — he thought I would be elected."

"Why weren't you?" she asked.

"I never entered the election," said the wizard. "I fear Cornelius does not truly understand it, but I do _not_ wish for power. Not… anymore. It is largely coincidence that I happen to be the most titled wizard in Britain."

"Oh, I think I understand —" Hermione said, kinks working in her mind even as she spoke. "He thinks he _needs_ you to live up to the Minister you could have been… but at the same time, he fears that if he relies on you you're just using him as a puppet."

"Precisely."

"And so, and so," she said with the excitement of someone who's just cracked a complex and stimulating riddle or code, "as soon as he saw an opportunity to ask someone _else_ — someone he deems bright, someone he'd face no dishonor from associating with, and yet someone who has no chance of threatening to take over the government…"

"He took it, yes," Dumbledore finished with warm amusement. "I'm ashamed to say, you've taken quite the workload off my back."

"But… but… I can't," Hermione objected, anxiety overcoming her. "I'm clever, yes, I strive to be a good person, but — but — I'm fourteen! I can't be ruling a country! I've got to write the Minister, tell him —"

"Please don't," Dumbledore interrupted her, growing more serious.

"But –"

" _Please_ ," Dumbledore pleaded, " _listen_ to me. I know not whether Cornelius Fudge might be a great, or even a good, Minister in his own right. But he shall not try. He is too afraid, he feels to inadequate atop that big throne where he woke up, one sad morning, not quite remembering how he got there. Left to his own devices he'd crumble and cry."

Hermione nodded as Dumbledore paused for a moment.

"But his pride," Dumbledore continued, "will not allow it, and so he will seek out aid and advice wherever he finds it. Wizarding Britain is lucky, if I do say so, that his first choice was this old schoolteacher, and his second in you. Fudge was a Slytherin, you know; I am the first to argue that this is not a condemnation, but he has made _friends_ there, and absorbed certain _ideas,_ though he may not realize it."

She gulped. She certainly wouldn't have pegged Cornelius Fudge as a blood-purist at first glance, let alone a Death Eater, but if Dumbledore spoke true…

"Consider, Miss Granger — consider what might happen if Cornelius Fudge decided to seek political advice from his old schoolmate Lucius Malfoy."

"…Ah." Hermione said after a moment of reflection. "Yes. I see. …I'll do it."

She began to slowly walk out of the Headmaster's Office.

"Oh, Miss Granger?" the Headmaster called her back.

"Yes?"

"If you're ever stumped by some obstructive legalese or some such," he offered, "I will, of course, be glad to advise _you_ on how best to advise _him_."

"Thank you!" she said, truly grateful.

"And I am sure our dear friend the Sorting Hat will as well, hm?" said Dumbledore, nudging the old leather hat.

"Wh-? What?" stammered the Hat. "… _Dammit_ , Albus! I had found the most wonderful rhyme for 'Four Founders' — and now, I've forgotten !"

The Sorting Hat glared as the wizard and witch burst out laughing.

"It's not _funny_!" the grouchy Hat grumbled. "I do have to get this song ready before Easter, you know! I'm an artist! I need time to rehearse!…"

For some reason, that clarification made them laugh even more.


	24. Trouble in the Corridor

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This was a quick update! As you will see, I have decided to add a little bit of conflict around here, in the form of a villain who is not either a pompous blond-haired ferret, or currently Petrified under lock and key. And I daresay my choice of an antagonist is quite fitting considering just what the point of departure of this story is… Alright, I have said enough. As always, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I dearly thank all Favers, Followers and especially Reviewers!_

 **Chapter XXII - _Trouble in the Corridor_**

"So how do you keep yourself busy down here, anyway?" Hermione asked. "Do you spend time with Miss Psusennes?"

"Who?" Sirius Black asked in confusion, setting down his cup of coffee.

"Pili Psusennes, the Sphinx in the Second Chamber."

"Ah, her…" Sirius nodded. "Well, no, I don't think we'd get along too well. She's the type to actually _follow rules_ , see. Besides, I'd have to get a Portkey to that Chamber to even visit her. As amusing as the prospect would be, I can't just Portkey to the entrance room and melt down poor Snivellus's Seal every time I want to chat with her."

"Well then…?"

"Mostly, I play pranks on Snivellus," said Sirius. "Ones less likely to get me on Dumbledore's bad side, that is. Do you remember when his hair turned purple at dinner the other day?"

"Oh, Mr Padfoot, you rogue," Hermione snickered, "you did _not_ sneak out of the Third Floor Corridor, putting your entire cover at risk."

"Oh, my godson Sir Scarhead, ye too generous soul, " Sirius said dramatically, "you did not lend my your Invisibility Cloak, enabling my sneaking out…"

The Senior and Junior Marauder shared a laugh and downed their tea to calm themselves.

"You know," said Lady Macbrains, "we really ought to start planting seeds of a rumor — a rumor that you are a ghost. That way if someone _does_ see you by chance, they'll think Hogwarts just got a new spectre and won't make any ruckus out of it. It would make sense, you know. You _did_ die here."

"You may be right, milady," Sirius nodded, jotting down some notes on a piece of parchment lying on his at-the-moment-not-man-eating desk. "Ah, would that I still had the Marauder's Map…"

"True, we do need it more than Scabbers," Hermione nodded. "If he didn't plan on staying here, it was quite rude of him to take it, I should think."

The fire crackled in the not-growling fireplace. Hermione realized she probably shouldn't have mentioned the old rat.

"…Say, Padfoot," she changed the subject, "you keep mentioning that you pranked Snape in _this_ way, or helped Fred and George with pranking it in _that_ way… Why are you always pranking _him_?"

"That would be the decades-old enmity between us," Sirius explained with a wry smile. "We Marauders and Snape never did get along too well to begin with — the old Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry at first, nothing more to it. I must say that my personal dislike for those green gits didn't help."

"They're not _all_ bad, you know," Hermione pouted playfully.

"Oh? Can you cite a good Slytherin to me?"

"Well, there's Professor Vector, of course, Professor Sinestra, that friendly Professor Slughorn I met at Remus's Petrification… Minister Fudge is a Slytherin too, and he's not bad, he's just a little clueless…"

"I mean _students_ ," Sirius interrupted her. "It may seem hard to believe, but I and Snivellus were once _students_."

"Well, uhm… uhm…" she hesitated. "Daphne Greengrass?"

"Have you ever talked to her?" asked Sirius.

"Er, no, she just… _seems_ nice," Hermione said uncertainly. "You know. She doesn't sneer and smirk like the others."

"That's not much to go on to make sweeping statements about her morality, now is it?" Sirius argued.

"I suppose not…" she admitted. "Still, _he_ never gets to prank _you_ , it hardly seems fair."

"Oh, I assure you he _did_ use to get back to us Marauders, back in the days," the wizard reminisced. "Hell, our feud practically _started_ the idea of Prank Wars! In fact, I think Snivellus found it just as much fun as we did, at first."

"At first?" Hermione prodded.

"Well," Sirius explained, his smile faltering, "it was fine when we were just kids messing around, but… ah, I already told Harry all about that, didn't he relay it to you?"

"No, he didn't," she said.

"Then perhaps I shouldn't…" Sirius began. "Oh, who am I kidding. It's not _his_ secrets — and anyway, Marauders don't have secrets for each other. Well… in our Second and Third Year, James and Snivellus both started to, well, to _grow up_. They began to look at _girls_. And, well, I say girls, but it wasn't any girl — just one — a Gryffindor called Lily Evans. Snivellus already knew her, they'd been friends before Hogwarts."

"Harry's mother…" Hermione breathed.

"Precisely," nodded Sirius. "What used to be playfulness turned to jealously, and then to hatred. I'm sorry to say such things about old Mr Prongs, but in Fifth Year, I'm sure _either_ could have cast a Killing Curse at the other in a blink. And, well, where one Marauder went, we all did. The more viciously Snape fought back, the more vicious we all became, James, Remus, Peter and me. When Snape started to get tangled up with Death Eaters, we just felt validated. There, we thought, was proof that Sneering Snivellus Snape was _always_ bad seed — that we'd just been the first to realize it. I guess we didn't quite consider that having the soul of Gryffindor beating him up every other week _might_ have pushed him a bit towards the other side."

"It sounds like you're quite lucid about that whole feud," Hermione noted in a pleased tone. "I'm actually impressed. But then, why do you keep pranking him?"

"There's force of habit, I suppose. But mostly?" Sirius said, losing all seriousness. "He's just too damn hilarious a victim. He never bloody _smiles_. Every scowling face he gets after a prank is frame-worthy, I tell you!"

Hermione thought back to Snape's breakdown when she'd forced him to take a million points from his own House. She began to chuckle.

"I can definitely get behind that." she said.

"Good!" Sirius joined in. "We'll make a real Marauder out of you yet!"

The two shared some more laughs and agreed on a course of action to start Operation Ghost Sirius. Eventually, Sirius's clock gave a small snarl to mark that it was now eight o'clock, p.m.

Hermione set down her cup.

"I'm sorry, Sirius, but I should be going. Tomorrow's a Tuesday, we've got Charms, I still have to wrap up my essay on the theory of Color-Changing Charms — and before that, I really should check up on Apophis. Between regular schoolwork, the whole Lycanthropy thing, and ruling this country, I just haven't found the time, even with a Time-Turner."

"You still won't lend that thing to me, will you?" Sirius asked, more out of principle than of any real hope.

"Not if you're going to use it for what I think you are," Hermione said with a grin.

"Too bad. Well, bye-bye!"

"Bye!"

Just as Hermione walked away into the previous Chamber and closed the door behind her, Sirius called:

"…wait, what do you mean ruling this count-"

Well, too late, she'd closed the door. It was enough that she had to set reasonable tax rates in place of a wizard who'd obviously never had an hour of Arithmancy in his life — she didn't want to have to _talk_ about it. Not right now, anyway.

The room that had first been home to a Potions Riddle, and then to her own friend Maximilian back before he became sentient, had been Charmed by Professor Flitwick into a comfortable lair for a snake — warm, damp and dark. Apophis was lazing about on a bed of dark green moss, nibbling on a mouse.

{ _Greetings, Apophis!_ } she said cheerfully. { _I hope you are well?_ }

{ _Greetings, Hermione Granger!_ } Apophis said, perking up. { _Yes, I have recovered all of my strength._ }

{ _Good_ ,} Hermione said.

There was a blank. Hermione had subconsciously expected Apophis to ask how _she_ was — but of course, a poor slave of a serpent who lived in a Death Eater's basement wouldn't have a very good grasp of manners.

{ _I have come,_ } she explained, { _to have a look at your Mark._ }

{ _Yes_ ,} Apophis said, his tone growing anxious, { _yes, you must remove it, please, yes — the Masters, they could take me back — please, yes —_ }

{ _I have already thought of it,_ } Hermione said calmingly, { _as you see. For weeks I have been pondering how to counteract that Mark, I have asked the Teachers Dumbledore, Flitwick and Lupin for advice. It might be possible. But I have something better, perhaps._ }

Apophis nodded and uncoiled his body. He slid aside, uncovering his underbelly; a little below his throat, barely visible on his dark scales, was a jagged black line. The Serpent's Mark.

Hermione breathed in deeply, doing her best to remember the spell that Professor Dumbledore had uncovered for her, in one of the dark tomes he kept in his office — for they were too terrible even for the Restricted Section. She touched her wand to the tip of the Mark and intoned:

 _'_ _Ngathess asheeh sss-shh-ssss,_

 _'_ _Ngathess asheeh hsssh_

 _Tsss!_

It was Parseltongue, versified Parseltongue. _To me, may he be bonded. Mine, may he be always. I order it._

The Mark glistened, it seemed to twist and coil like a true snake for the barest of moment.

She Transfigured a piece of rock into a needle and pricked her thumb, letting the blood seep into the mark, infusing it with a ruby coloration that soon faded.

{ _Alright_ ,} she said, letting the solemness of the moment be diluted by her business-like attitude. { _It should work._ }

{ _What… did you do?…_ } Apophis asked fearfully.

{ _I turned the Malfoys' spells back against them_ ,} she explained. { _Now I could summon you with Serpensortia as well as they could. And I promise, I shall not summon you unless either you ask me to, or to retrieve you if the Malfoys ever take you back._ }

{ _Ah… thank you, Mistress Hermione Granger_ ,} Apophis said. { _This makes sense. You are clever._ }

{ _They tell me I am_ ,} she hiss-chuckled. { _But — come, let us test that._ }

She strode to the other side of the room, snapped her wand upwards and incanted:

" _Serpensortia!_ "

Sure enough, Apophis twisted out of existence on the bed of moss and sprang out of the tip of her wand to slump down on the damp, earthy ground below.

{ _Well, well, well._ } she said with satisfaction.

Playfully, she ran her hand down Apophis's now harmless Mark…

…Then something went wrong.

There was a bang, and, in a flash of black smoke, a man with a victorious smirk materialized, hanging on to Apophis's tail as if to a portkey. His face was lined, his fair hair unkempt and disheveled. He wore short black robes and leather boots that had both obviously seen better days.

The wizard looked around with his gleaming eyes, his eyes going from Hermione to Apophis, searching.

"…Who are you?" Hermione asked, gathering her wits.

"None of your concern," the wizard said. His voice sounded strained and almost gave out at the end of the sentence. He coughed. "Who are _you_?"

"Sir, you have the honor of addressing Hermione Jean Granger, Knight of the Order of the Junior Marauders, Parselmouth, Order of Merlin, Second Class," Hermione said without taking a breath. Bragging felt _good_. "Now, just how did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Apparate inside Hogwarts," she explained, her eyes and tones conveying how dumb he was being.

"Enough nosy nonsense!" said the wizard, lurching at her.

She tried to cast _Stupefy_ , but inexplicably found her wand already in the man's hand.

"Hey! That's mine!" she protested as he grabbed her roughly, his forearm catching her throat. She gagged. "Gsp-"

"Well, not anymore," said her assailant. "Now. _Where is she?_ "

"Who?" Hermione managed to ask.

" _Her_ ," he repeated. "She who knows His secrets. Nagini."

"I have no idea who you're—" she tried to retort, but she ran out of air. She took a deep breath against the pressure. "I don't know."

"Then we'll just have to do this the hard way, won't we?" said the Dark Wizard, sadistically. " _Impe_ —"

Before he could finish the incantation of his Unforgivable Curse, there was a cry of _Stupefy_ and the Dark Wizard slumped forward.

"What?" Hermione and Apophis asked at the same time (although not in the same languages).

A piece of paper flew out of nothingness just behind the Stunned wizard.

 _Dear Hermione,_

 _Please destroy this message when you're done reading it. Exactly one hour from when I appeared, that is to say at precisely 18:45, you need to have borrowed Harry's Invisibility Cloak, written this note, and then time-turn to Stupefy the Dark Wizard._

 _If you're wondering, I have already left the room by the time you read this. I'll wait quietly, invisible, until 19:46. That ought to avoid any major paradoxes. I'm really sorry we had to do this, but before you get angry at how irresponsible I'm being, do remember that my mistakes are your mistakes, and it would cause more trouble to avoid them… obviously._

 _Oh, one more thing — the Dark Wizard is going to vanish in a minute or so. I'd rather he hadn't, but again, don't try to change it. Time is Time._

 _With love,_

 _You._

* * *

One hour and five minutes later, Hermione was standing in front of the entrance to the Headmaster's Office, which had, this time, materialized by the Hospital Wing.

"Hello, Boar, I'd like to speak to Professor Dumbledore, please. It's important."

The Bored Boar looked at her with its beady stone eyes and mumbled:

"P'f'ssor D'b'ledore's sleepin'."

"…Ah. Yes. He does sleep at night, doesn't he. Hm. I'll be back tomorrow morning."

* * *

"Albus, do you know of any means by which a crazy Dark Wizard might get into Hogwarts?"

"My dear," Dumbledore said with concern, looking up from the beignet he was dumping into his morning cocoa, "I dearly hope that this is a theoretical question, but something tells me it is not."

"I never said it was," she answered. "A crazy Dark Wizard got into the Third Floor Corridor yesterday evening."

"And you… didn't tell me?" Dumbledore said, furrowing his brow.

"Well, I was a bit tied up at the time," she replied. "Tried-to-use-the-Imperius-Curse-on-me tied up. And then by the time I'd defeated him you were sleeping and he was gone, and I didn't want to wake you up for a little thing like that."

"Little?" Dumbledore repeated, surprised. "Hermione, I daresay I expected more sense from you. If a Dark Wizard found his way to the Third Floor Corridor, he doubtless suspects just what — well, just _whom_ — we are keeping down there…"

"Oh, no, don't worry," Hermione said with a wide smile, "it was quite obvious the fiend had just gotten the wrong address."

"…I'm sorry?" said Dumbledore, and he let go of his beignet altogether, which was a very serious sign.

"He kept going on about finding someone," Hermione explained, eyeing the beignet. She'd been in such a hurry to speak with the Headmaster that she hadn't bothered with breakfast, and she was now regretting that. "But it wasn't the Turban — it was someone _female_ , with some Indian name, you see. 'Nagini', I believe."

"Nagini…" Dumbledore breathed. "Hermione, I assure you, this is _quite_ serious. You say the madman 'got' into Hogwarts?"

"He seemed to Apparate," she answered. "Which, of course, should be impossible unless one is, well, you. Or an Elf. Come to think of it, I don't know if a Goblin could Apparate into Hogwarts… oh, well, I digress. The point is, in hindsight, I think he may have somehow hijacked _Serpensortia_ to teleport to Apophis's location."

"I'm sorry, would you remind me who Apophis is?" asked the old wizard, adjusting his glasses.

"The Malfoys' old slave," she answered, "the snake. You know. The one who can't survive away from…"

"From what?"

"From the Turban."

"Miss Granger," Dumbledore said sternly, "it seems you have neglected to mention this detail to me. I was under the impression that this serpent you brought in to replace young Mr Candy was merely an acquaintance of yours."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she apologized, "I told Professor Lupin all about it, asking him for help… I assumed he'd tell you. But I suppose he had rather a lot on his mind lately, didn't he…"

"Ah…" said Dumbledore, "that would be why Remus borrowed _Magicke Moste Evil_ from my personal library the other day. I see. Well, at any rate, I suppose I can glimpse in what ways a Death Eater, such as this man doubtless was, might have found…"

"So you think he must have been a Death Eater?" Hermione asked with interest.

"Oh yes," nodded Dumbledore, "to know about Nagini, he must."

" _Death Eater_ …" Hermione repeated with an impish smile. "That is such a bizarre name."

"I must agree," Dumbledore said. "I'm really much more of a Beignet Eater, myself."

So saying, the Grand Sorcerer picked the beignet up (to Hermione's dismay) and began nibbling on it with renewed appetite.

"But who _is_ Nagini?" she asked.

"Ah…" he answered, "Nagini is a snake, a clever and cold-hearted being. I know not where the two met, but during the last war, Tom took a liking to her, and she to him. I believe she is as much his friend as anything can ever be. She shared his viciousness, his pride, his love of wanton murder. When Tom disappeared in 1981, she disappeared who knew where… We did not hunt her down, because, after all, she was but a large snake, no matter how evil — the remaining _wizard_ followers of Tom were a far more urgent threat. Unfortunately, I fear I may have miscalculated."

"How?"

"As you know, Lord Voldemort believes himself the last remaining Heir of Salazar Slytherin," Dumbledore explained, "and, as such, the only Parselmouth in England. Because he thinks he is the only wizard whom she could communicate with, it seems that Voldemort has trusted Nagini with some secrets that even his most faithful followers never knew. Secrets which, I fear, this Dark Wizard may be trying to gain for himself."

"What sort of secrets?"

"Terrible, Dark secrets," Dumbledore said evasively.

"Such as?" she prompted, not convinced by the wizard's crypticness.

"Well, for instance…" Dumbledore said gravel, "did you ever wonder how Tom cheated Death?"

"Of course I did," she answered, "who wouldn't? But I found out ages ago, I don't need some long-lost snake."

"You _did?_!?" said Dumbledore, uncharacteristically roused.

"Yes, it involved splitting his s-"

Dumbledore raised a palm.

"Hermione," he said, "I would be fascinated to hear about your obviously very simple answer to the problem that has kept me up at night for decades …but before I do, I would very much like to finish my cocoa."


	25. Halloween Hijinx

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Another update? Boy, am I on a roll. For the record, it occurred to me that I skipped over the entire Incident with Aunt Marge in the summer preceding this Year. There's actually a good reason: with Apophis in the house, the Dursleys fended off any attempts by friends and family to come visit, and instead they went off to Marge's house for a week, giving Harry seven days to enjoy the whole of Privet Drive for himself. There! Happy, nitpickers? Also, as always, many thanks to Favers, Followers and Reviewers alike. You all make writing this worth it. And now — Halloween!_

 **Chapter XXIII: _Halloween Hijinx_**

In the time remaining until Hallowe'en, Hermione (with the help of the Weasley Twins) had been perfecting Operation Ghost Sirius. They had already used the Grandmasters' Remote Reverberators to send out some ghostly wails in Sirius's voice down the corridors at midnight, where they knew Mr Filch would hear them; but the main operation, the one for which she had spent even more time in the Library than usual, was set to go off on Hallowe'en Night. That seemed a fitting date for launching a ghost story.

Thus, in the afternoon, on Sunday, October the 31st, Hermione joined Sirius in his room of the Corridor.

"All ready to proceed, Mr Padfoot?" she said militarily.

"Aye, milady," Sirius saluted.

He had used some subtle charms and transfiguration (plus a bit of muggle makeup supplied by Hermione) to make his face and hands appear gaunter and ghostlier than they really were; instead of his usual maroon robes and slippers, he was wearing the same rags that Maximilian had worn for Sirius's "Death Scene". Those were complemented by some translucent chains supplied by the Twins.

Sirius readied himself and Hermione cast a Disillusionment Charm on him. It was intentionally a shoddy job, and the botched invisibility spell made Black just slightly transparent — the perfect result for a ghost. Sirius added a charm on his own to give himself a faint green glow, and then covered himself with Harry's Invisibility Cloak.

With Sirius walking invisible behind her, Hermione then walked out of the Third Floor Corridor to the Feast where Harry, Ron and Maximilian were (she was sure) already gorging themselves with sweets.

While Hermione took her place at the Gryffindor Table and began to taste some of the wizarding sweets that Dumbledore had hand-picked himself, Sirius, all according to plan, made his way to the Head Table, just behind Professor Trelawney.

From the safety of the Cloak, Sirius cast a Confundus Charm on her and then whispered:

" _At the strike of lightning, the Marauder shall return…_ "

Trelawney didn't squeak in surprise (as she doubtless would have without the Confundus), and Sirius repeated the same sentence twice more before dispelling the Confundus.

This had the effect the Marauders had been counting on, as Sybill rose dramatically and loudly repeated the 'prediction' that she had just received.

Professor Dumbledore looked doubtful and winked in Sirius's direction, but it made quite an impression on most of the Hall, especially Professor Trelawney's usual sycophants, starting with Lavender Brown. Professor Snape began to look around fearfully, double-checking all of the foodstuff he'd chosen (none of which included the slightest bit of candy, predictably enough) for poisons and curses.

As nothing happened for a while, however, and with a few calming words from the Headmaster that covertly implied Professor Trelawney hadn't just been drinking pumpkin juice, the Hall calmed down and people started enjoying themselves again.

At the strike of nine o'clock, however, all the floating pumpkins spelled by Professor Flitwick himself went out of control, flying around the room in a veritable Whirlwind of Doom. (Sirius had coined that phrase when thinking up this part.)

Purple-tinged lightning descended from the dark ceiling and struck an apparently empty patch of ground in the middle of the Hall — precisely where Sirius had supposedly died last year.

As the cloud of greenish-purple spoke dissipated, Sirius — cloak off — stood, howling.

"BOOOoooooOooOoOooOoo!"

Once he'd finished his Creepy Wail, which he'd practiced in the soundproof safety of the Corridor, Sirius looked around expectantly, though maintaining a Snape-worthy scowl for his performance's sake.

Obviously, no one quite knew what to make of him. Most of the younger students looked scared, of course, because this was _the ghost of Sirius Black_. But it didn't look like his Startling Shriek had really helped matters.

Hermione sent him a quick look that spelled 'I told you so' more plainly than an entire scroll of parchment discussing the matter — though Hermione _would_ , of course, be writing that scroll of parchment later on.

After allowing himself a discreet shrug, Sirius moved on to the second part of his plan, wherein he began to monologue while walking wantonly through the room.

" _OoOo!_ I have _returned_ from beyond the _graAaAaaAve_! _FEaAAaR MeEeEEE!_ Never in Hoo _OoO_ gw _a_ Aarts's HistoOoOry has theEre beEEeeEn a moOore terrrrrible ghoOoOoOst than _MEEEEE_!"

Looking at the Head Table, Hermione saw Snape pinch himself. Repeatedly. Then check his drink's contents again. Still water? Still water.

The Potions Master began to slowly walk backwards from the table.

" _YooOoOuUuu CaAnnNoTt hOoOpe to escAaApe MEEEE_!" the Terrible Ghost of Sirius Black wailed at Snape's intention, coming after him, jumping several feet over the Head Table to do so (the Twins' Bouncing Boots really were wonderful things).

Snape whirled around, desperation obvious on his sallow face, and his wand shot out in his hand.

" _SKURGE!_ "

Hermione hadn't anticipated Snape using the Ghost-Banishing Charm at Sirius, but this actually played in their hand. As he was no ghost, Sirius easily absorbed the dark green spell with no adverse effects and continued striding towards Snape, moaning scarily.

Any remaining color drained from Snape's face; the Potions Master allowed himself a yelp as he kicked into the air and flew like a rocket down the corridor to the Dungeons.

The Terrible Ghost of Sirius Black ran after him before taking an unexpected turn into a section of wall, through which he passed effortlessly.

Of course, any Marauder knew that this particular section of wall could be stepped through by anyone who'd come in at least three hours earlier and said 'Strawberry'.

But the average Hogwarts denizen did not know that.

* * *

If Hermione hadn't been so busy watching over Operation Ghost Sirius, she might have noticed that the Slytherin Table was somewhat more agitated than one might expect. Rather than spreading out and scaring other students, which was usually their favorite pastime on Halloween, most of the Slytherins had been huddled around Draco Malfoy, conspiring with the blond bully. Naturally, conspiring was something the Slytherins did quite often, but the fact that they were doing it with Draco Malfoy, and while staring right at her at the Gryffindor Table, should have set off all sorts of alarms in Hermione's mind.

But again, however, this was not so.

With Operation Ghost Sirius a success, Hermione and her friends celebrated by biting even more heartily into the sugary Halloween banquet, before retreating to their dorm.

In the Common Room, the Weasley Twins had found the time to put up some enchanted decorations to add to Professor McGonagall's sober orange draperies and pumpkin candleholders. At the forefront was was a large scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head. With Hermione's help, they had scoured the library for the enchantments used in making living statues; at Hermione's insistence, they had been careful not to put the intelligence spells in, but had put the rest to good use.

The result was a little like what a muggle would call an Animatronic — it circled through preprogrammed motions of moving about in scary ways. They had hidden a Remote Reverberator inside the pumpkin-head, allowing George to tell scary stories through the Scarecrow's mouth to frightened and delighted first-years (and to older students who saw right through it but were still delighted) from the safety of the dorms.

It was quite clear no one was going to go to bed until midnight at least, try as Prefect Weasley and Professor McGonagall might; but Hermione was fine with that.

She was a little less okay with a Dementor somehow barging through the door, to the outrage of the Fat Lady.

She had seen taller ones, but the Dementor was still quite fearsome. It wore glistening black robes, was surrounded by a light blue mist, and glided more than it walked. The Dementor took rasping breaths as it slowly walked into the Common Room.

What the Dementor had probably not counting on was immediately being assaulted by a whole lot of Patronuses before anyone even began to wonder how it had gotten here.

The Patronuses didn't seem to be all that aggressive (but then, this was a rather small Dementor), but they still made an effect on the wraith, who began to flee — unfortunately, it was feeling forward rather than backwards, apparently headed for the girls' dormitories.

As the Dementor floated up the stairs and into her dorm, she noted with interest that the stairs _hadn't_ turned into a slide. This finally proved beyond all doubt that Dementors were not male — or at least, that this one wasn't.

After committing this fact to memory, Hermione yelled:

"Lock the door!"

The female Gryffindor Prefect, Anna Mirfield, didn't have to be told twice. She ran up the stairs after the Dementor and bolted the door. Most of the students dispelled their Patronuses with relief, except for Harry, who was the most proficient at the spell and kept his Stag Patronus up to guard the door.

"Alright, that was strange," Hermione commented as everyone regained their bearings. "I don't know what it wants, but if someone could bring Professor Dumbledore or Professor Lupin…?"

Percy Weasley gave a military salute and ran off.

A few minutes later, Professors Lupin and Dumbledore, looking worried and understandably surprised, entered Gryffindor Tower. Their Patronuses were already up —Remus's was a large but tame-look dog or wolf, while Albus's was a Phoenix.

Professor Dumbledore said a few calming words before confidently walking up the stairs to the Girls' Dormitories.

Predictably, they turned into a slide and Dumbledore fell backwards, also knocking Lupin off his feet.

"Ah… yes…" Dumbledore muttered, readjusting his glasses. "I always forget…"

The Headmaster then gripped Professor Lupin's hand and Apparated up the stairs, to the surprise of most everyone, including Lupin.

He then slowly turned the key in the lock and opened the door, to find —

the Dementor, hood off, holding a wand and trying various curses on Hermione's trunk.

" _Hey_! That's mine!" she said, leaping from behind the two Professors and running at the Dementor.

"Miss Granger, we'll handle this," said Dumbledore, putting a firm hand on her shoulder and pulling her back. "Now, Mr Pike, if you would put an end to this masquerade…"

The Slytherin boy, looking sheepish, pulled off his Dementor gloves, dispelled the modified Modesty Charm keeping the mist around him, and took off his Zonko's Floating Shoes.

"And what exactly was the purpose of this, Mr Pike?" asked Lupin.

"Slytherin secret, werewolf," Bronson Pike answered defiantly.

"You wouldn't be trying to retrieve a certain Dark Artifact in the form of a diary, would you, Mr Pike?" Dumbledore weighed in. "For the record, that is fifteen points from Slytherin House for insulting a teacher."

Pike seemed somewhat stunned that Dumbledore knew about the Diary, but answered:

"I deny anything related to any diary, and that's final."

"Very well, Mr Pike," Dumbledore said sternly, "but that will still be fifty more points from Slytherin House and an hour of detention with your Head of House for breaching another House's Common Room, plus ten more points for looking inside a young lady's private things."

Pike scowled.

"Right, right," he muttered as he began to walk away, "I know the drill. I'll report to Professor Snape tomorrow. Bye."

"Don't leave just yet," Dumbledore added with a smile. "I do not condone your purposes, but I must still, in all fairness, give you twenty points for creative charm work, a costume that is definitely in the spirit of the season, and overall a well-played prank."

Pike didn't know quite what to make of it; he stopped briefly, nodded, and then left Gryffindor Tower for good.

* * *

Golden instruments wheezled and twittered and popped; a tacky little plastic statue — a green-skinned figure that was a Muggle's idea of a witch — let out a cackle every now and then to add to the cacophony.

"Alright, so he wanted the Diary," Hermione said, frowning, thinking hard. " _Why_?"

"From what you tell me," Dumbledore replied, "it must have been Lucius Malfoy's idea, relayed to young Mr Pike by Draco."

"Obviously," Hermione agreed. "But why? Or rather, why _now_? I made it clear weeks ago to Malfoy that I had the Diary, so why would he act _now_? Has he been in contact with some other piece of the Turban?"

Dumbledore slouched down on his throne-like chair.

"You… you truly believe he made _more_?" he said with a strained voice. "More than _one_ of these abominations?!…"

"Yes," Hermione said, wondering what had her Headmaster so bothered. "Why, don't you?"

"I… suspected, I feared so…" answered the sorcerer, "but I hoped with all my heart it was but the delusion of a paranoid mind…"

"I don't have any proof or anything like that, of course," she explained, "but if I decided to create Horcruxes for some reason, then I would most definitely make at least two. Especially if my first one was that Diary."

"Why?" said Dumbledore, regaining his countenance.

"Well, you see," she explained, "I don't know if Riddle intended for _Malfoy_ to set it off, but it's clear that he _meant_ to send out the Diary into the world and have it trick unsuspecting victims. I've had Sirius examine the Diary, and it has several spells on it meant to facilitate possession by the spirit within. Now, if the Turban truly is so pathetically frightened of death as you tell me, he wouldn't gamble with his only safeguard of immortality by making it double as a weapon. He must have at least one more, and probably several. It's only logical."

"But… the cost!…" said Dumbledore, shaken. "Think of the cost!"

"Of course, _I_ think of the cost!" she objected. " _You_ think of the cost! Anyone decent would think of the cost! But if Riddle was so willing to go through it once, why would he be afraid to do it twice? In fact, I'd guess it's a slippery slope. The more damaged his soul is from the previous Horcrux, the less humane he is, and the less reluctant he is to try again. An exponential curve of horror."

Dumbledore swallowed his glass of pumpkin juice in one go.

"In fact," she added with a wry smile, "it probably wouldn't have been a very humane way of doing it, but if we'd left Voldemort alone and active long enough, I have a feeling the problem would have solved itself, because he'd have made one Horcrux too many and ended up with too little soul to function. …So there's that."

"…Yes," said Dumbledore, and he looked distinctly frightened of the mind that had leisurely held this reasoning. "Well, be that as it may, I… don't believe it's likely that another Horcrux is responsible for the Malfoys' actions. …In truth, Hermione, I think you overestimate Draco Malfoy."

"That's… surprising," Hermione said skeptically, "because I think he's an obnoxious nuisance of a schoolyard bully."

"Oh, but you do," Dumbledore said, a smile once more settling on his grandfatherly face; "specifically, you overestimate how much of a Slytherin he is. Given how badly you scared him during your last confrontation, I would not deem it unlikely that it took him a week or two to muster enough courage to tell his father about all of this, and then several weeks more to work out a plan to take the Diary back from you _without_ putting himself in your way."

"Ah, you mean he's a coward," Hermione nodded. "Yes, that would explain it."

She leaned forward to check one of the silvery instruments, which she was pretty sure was actually just a fancy clock hidden in plain sight among the clutter.

"Eleven…" she mused. "Well, I'd best be getting back to the Tower before the party goes too far without me."

"Good evening!" Dumbledore said genially. "And be sure to look out for more attempts on the Diary, one is never too careful."

* * *

 _To: **Minister Cornelius Oswald Fudge**_

 _Hogwarts Castle, the 1st of November, 1993_

 _ **Dear Minister Fudge** ,_

 _I must thank you once again for deigning to ask me for advice. In regards to the issues you raised with your last letter, I will address them in order as usual._

 _Firstly, and with all due respect, I do not believe that Madam Dolores Umbridge is truly suited to her current position as Senior Undersecretary. I think that the Incident in the Headmaster's Office was enough to prove that she is a little too quick to allow personal grudges to get in the way of true justice to truly fulfill such a high office. If she truly seems so adamant on tightening legislation concerning Centaurs and Alizors, then it seems to me that it is more likely a result of some personal trauma than it is of rational political thought. Do not misunderstand me: I have no personal dislike of Madam Umbridge, indeed, she seems like a friendly enough witch… but alas, being friendly is not enough to be competent. As to her replacement, I will not claim to know your staff better than yourself; I shall merely remind you, should it cross your mind, that I am legally minor, and that Professor Dumbledore **does not want the post**._

 _Secondly, Lucius Malfoy was indeed quite generous in Galleons; but please, do not try to reward him for it. He is obviously a philanthropist, and a true philanthropist is always embarrassed to receive repayment for a gift. Of course, he must have smiled and thanked you on previous occasions, but only for the sake of politeness, as he is, of course, an impeccably polite man. Especially considering how much wealth and power he already possesses, any additional gifts must have felt like awkward lily-gilding to him._

 _And finally, the most recent issue: the ghost of Sirius Black. I would advise against taking action in this matter. A man as busy as you is easily forgiven for forgetting it, but the Absolution Act of 1812 states clearly that a ghost cannot be prosecuted for pre-mortem crimes. Trying to exorcise Sirius Black on the grounds of his past actions would be a clear breach of the treaty, and thus a diplomatic misstep. Remember that the Irish Ministry has always taken ghost interests to heart; going after Black might make relations with them tenser than they have any need to be. Your worries about the students' safety are naturally commendable, but as a student myself, I can testify that I am not at all worried about the ghost of Sirius Black. The most he can do is look scary and wail, which has never been a crime, nor any sort of danger. Remember, you, a Slytherin, that the House Ghost of Slytherin is also a rather creepy murderer, and yet there has never been any attempt to displace him._

 _Your young friend and admirer,_

 ** _Hermione Jean Granger_**


	26. Snookering Slytherins

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Hi! We're back! This again took a little longer than expected, but bah. I'm still a lot faster than most, I believe, if a little irregular. Anyway, for the Ravenclaws among you: this chapter contains foreshadowing for a future plotline. As I daresay most plotlines in this fic are, I think this one is quite unpredictable, but if you want to take a shot at guessing, do drop a review or PM! Speaking of which, as usual, thanks to all reviewers, favoriters and followers._

 **CHAPTER XXIV: _Snookering Slytherins_**

The month of November was off to a good start, for the 4th's issue of the _Daily Prophet_ proudly proclaimed:

 _ **MADAM UMBRIDGE DEMOTED**_

 _ **Minister Fudge's Bold Decision**_

 _ **Professor H. Slughorn Appointed in Stead**_

As expected, Hermione's name wasn't mentioned anywhere. On the other hand, there was a brief article by Quentin, informing the public that he had succeeded in purchasing a spot of land in Hogsmeade, and would be available for anyone who wished to hire him — letters, poems, interviews, obituaries, death threats, he did it all. Quite a clever quill.

On the next Sunday, Harry won the Quidditch Match against Ravenclaw, to the surprise of no one, although the Ravenclaw Seeker Cho Chang did put up a good fight. However, the match was nearly interrupted by the whole of Third-Year Slytherin, who had seemingly come just so they could boo and hiss whenever Harry did something.

It was arguably well-played of them — booing and hissing was not technically against the rules, and nor could Hermione, in good conscience, send Apophis or the Basilisk after them just because they'd been annoying.

Unfortunately for them, it wasn't quite clever enough of Malfoy. Because they'd certainly called _attention_ to themselves, and, in doing so, reminded Hermione that she ought to be doing something about the Slytherin's attempt at the Diary. Oh, it wasn't that she was _vengeful_ , not really. She preferred the term 'dealing out justice'.

* * *

Thus, on Tuesday, she borrowed the Cloak from Mr Padfoot and located the Slytherin Dungeons. (Its location _was_ supposedly a secret, but how fortunate it was that the Sorting Hat was one-fourth a brain-double of Salazar Slytherin!)

It was a little harder to get _into_ the Dungeons, as they were protected by a password. She had a few ideas what it might be, and "Pureblood", "Curses" and "Salazar" were high on that list; Slytherins were supposedly cunning, but in practice they were far from subtle. However, she didn't know whether there would be any adverse effects to failing to give the right password on the first try. Therefore, she waited instead until an actual SLytherin passed by — it was a rather ugly girl in her year, by the name of Millicent Bulstrode. She whispered "28" and a portion of wall slid aside. The invisible invader darted after Bulstrode and found herself inside the Slytherin Common Room.

It was every bit as cartoonishly sinister as expected; the chairs were more like great black thrones, and the whole room was basked in a greenish glow. There were carvings of snakes and skulls nearly everywhere she looked. Somewhat less predictably, the large windows gave a view of the murky depths of the Great Lake.

There were a few people in the Common Room — mostly older students perusing thick and dark tomes. (Getting closer, Hermione found that the dark tomes were simply ordinary seventh-year textbooks rebound in dark green leather.)

She wasn't quite sure why Slytherin were so devoted to this whole dark imagery, but they clearly _were_. She suddenly realized that it went a long way to explain how someone like Tom Riddle could have grown up undetected.

Ah, but she mustn't get sidetracked. She had a purpose here. She scanned the faces of the Dark-Wizards-in-training for a familiar one; and fortunately for her, one of Malfoy's goons was there, standing still, staring out the windows. It was the bigger one, the one with a name like… Lobster, something like that.

She poked him in the back with her wand.

"Don't yell and I won't do you any harm," she whispered in his ear.

Shrimp froze.

"Whadoyouwan'?" Gamba said quickly.

"Information," Hermione replied.

Though Jellyfish couldn't see it, she was thinking back fondly to when she'd watched the occasional spy drama with her family. Sally Granger always found it a little brutal, but Daniel, on the other hand, had always been quite fond of it. The point was, from what she'd seen of it, Hermione thought what she was doing was a lot like that.

"'bout… bout what?" asked the minion.

"Not so loud!" she whispered back. "And keep your eyes on the window."

The boy complied. Already some of the older Slytherins had been giving him suspicious looks.

"It's about the Diary," she said once she felt the other students had stopped staring.

"What about it?" said Crab — yes! That was it: Crabbe.

"Why did Pike want it? Malfoy?" she asked, again in her best impression of an angry, ruthless foreign agent.

"Yeah…" answered Crabbe. "The Boss, his Papa wants it back…"

"I thought so!" Hermione breathed triumphantly. "And… any other schemes in the brewing now that the first one failed?"

Crabbe looked pained and stayed silent for a little too long. Hermione jabbed her wand harder.

"Answer!"

"…right! Right!" admitted Crabbe. "The Boss thinks it's in the Thud-Floo'Corridor. The others, they've gone off, to raid it, why'd ya think I'm all 'lone? Please don't hurt me!"

"Why aren't you _with_ them?" Hermione asked, suspicious.

"'Cause… 'cause…" Crabbe hesitated, blushing. "…'cause I had a date. …Witha gurl."

Hermione's brain took a moment to process that. Crabbe had a date? Well, yes, of course, he was a human boy, after all, and getting about old enough — they were all getting about old enough, to be honest; Hermione thought Harry _had_ been looking a bit intently at the Ravenclaw Seeker lately — but — really? Crabbe? A _date_?

"…And Malfoy is okay with that?" she eventually asked.

"'sure he's," answered the minion. "'told him I'ad a date and he said good, he said… he said 'was _doin' ma duty by contributing to the future generations o'henchpersonry._ Not quite sure wha'he meant by that."

Hermione repressed a chuckle. Deciding it would be rude to continue that line of questioning, she concluded their little chat.

"Right, Crabbe, thanks for your _cooperation_ ," she said. "…Naturally, I wouldn't tell anyone about this if I were. Especially not _Da Boss_."

"'Kay, bye." said Crabbe in a whisper, like one would say any other parting words. Obviously, these sorts of conditions were all in a day's work for a Slytherin.

As she began to walk away, she saw that the Slytherin minion had returned to staring at the lake through the window, with utmost dedication. That was strange… but oh well, it wasn't her business. She ran out of the Dungeon, headed for the Third Floor.

When she got to the Corridor, it was obvious that the Slytherins had already gone in. The door was closed, but no longer locked; and most glaringly, there was a big hole in the floor. The Queenstinger Wax Seal of Professor Snape was intact — the Slytherins had just made a hole in the ground _next_ to it. She mentally slapped herself for not thinking of _that_ during her own exploration of the Corridor… though then again, the Basilisk Venom was just as efficient. That, and, well, Malfoy could afford to have his minions dig the hole for him; she couldn't. She had friends, not minions, dash it all.

She climbed into the hole and then down the marble stairs. Pili Psusennes stood there just as she had a year ago.

"Madam Psusennes —" Hermione said, bowing her head and raising her hands in what she knew to be a traditional Ancient Egyptian greeting.

"Hermione Granger," the Sphinx said, also bowing her head, though she had no hands to raise. "I take it you are pursuing the young mages who preceded you?"

"Er, yes," she confirmed. "So I'd appreciate if you could make the riddle snappy. Please."

Pili suppressed a grin and recited: " _What is that which is greater than the infinite, that the richest man alive does not possess, and that any pauper has?_ "

"Nothing," Hermione answered immediately. "Thank you, Pili."

She ran past the amused Sphinx, into the Chamber that used to belong to the Golden Griffin. The enchantments of darkness had been replaced with—

Oh.

 _Someone_ had been watching Muggle motion pictures.

In what was presumably Professor Babbling's belated addition to the Third-Floor Corridor, the floor was tiled with large marble stones engraved with Runes. A few of the tiles were replaced with gaping holes, and it made no doubt in Hermione's mind that one had to step on the tiles in the right order, lest the tile vanish, dropping you Merlin knew where.

She topped and took the Runes in, trying to recall all she could about what she'd learned about them in class and in her readings. The Slytherins had made it through (or at least some of them had; perhaps a minion or two had been lost to the holes, but there were fewer open holes than Draco had minions), so it couldn't be too hard.

At her feet was a Kenaz rune — intelligence, with the "Muggle Marker" Magnaz, so it was definitely the mundane meaning, not a spell… She then had three choices to move forward. One made no sense, but of the other, which to chose? She had Jera — existence, which in this context would be analogous to the verb 'to be', or there was an Isa-Sowilo cluster, for 'beyond'. She looked further, but there were too many possibilities to consider them all at once…

She noticed a bit of dirt on a faraway stone, in the shape of a footprint. That meant a Slytherin had stood there — and _walked away._ So it must be part of the correct solution. It was Sowilo, encircled with a blooming rosebush, thus 'greatest', 'best'. After it was only one possible solution that reached the opposite side of the room; Othala, a prized possession, a treasure.

"Intelligence beyond… Intelligence is… greatest possession… Wit beyond… greatest treasure…"

Something clicked in her mind. _Hogwarts: A History_ , Professor Bathilda Bagshot, Chapter I. The Motto of Rowena Ravenclaw.

" _Wit beyond measure is Man's greatest treasure_."

Hermione should have thought of that sooner. Professor Babbling _was_ a Ravenclaw, after all.

She practically skipped from one marble tile to another and arrived on the other side. The door had one last trial: there were four panels, with etchings of a snake, an eagle, a lion and a badger. That riddle was laughably easy; she pushed the Ravenclaw symbol and the door opened.

She found herself in the familiar setting of Apophis's room. The large black snake was lying in a corner, twitching. There was a long gash along his back, dripping thick, dark blood.

{ _Oh Merlin…_ } Hermione breathed, almost dropping her wand. { _Apophis!_ }

The serpent didn't appear to be in any state to form coherent words. He merely whimpered.

{ _Your old Master did this to you, didn't he?_ } she asked as she knelt beside Apophis.

{ _Yesss…_ } the snake hissed weakly.

{ _It's going to be alright, Apophis, don't worry, I swear it is,_ } she tried to reassure him.

Her heart was beating fast. What to do? Sirius could handle the Slytherins… probably… She needed to get help for Apophis. But who? She doubted Madam Pomfrey knew how to heal serpents, especially not one of unknown breed like Apophis… Professor Dumbledore might, but —

Oh, she was such an idiot. She knew just who could help her friend. There remained only the problem of getting him there. Ah, if only she could fly like Snape right about now… not to mention, she was no expert on medical science, but mightn't moving Apophis in this state hurt him even more?

Exactly three seconds into this line of thinking, Hermione realized that she was being silly, Hagrid was a mobile agent, and she could just run to his hut and bring him here.

{ _Hang on!_ } she told Apophis, darting back whence she came. { _I'll get help!_ }

* * *

Once she was out of the Corridor, she ordered anyone who could hear to immediately bring Hagrid to the Third-Floor Corridor as soon as they saw him. Then, she stormed out of the Great Hall and found Hagrid's hut. Thankfully, a warm firelight from the window confirmed the Keeper of the Keys was inside.

"Hagrid!" she called, banging on the door. "HAGRID!"

"What's it?" asked Hagrid, opening the door, still holding his woodcarving knife.

"I need your help," Hermione said quickly. "You can heal creatures, right?"

"Er, yeah," nodded the groundskeeper. "Why, som'n got hurt?"

"You could _say_ that!" she said angrily, beginning to run back to the Castle. "Take your umbrella and follow me!"

Hagrid's large strides soon caught up with her, and, realizing the half-giant would get there before her, she corrected: "Third-Floor Corridor! Fourth Chamber!"

When Hermione finally reached the Corridor, out of breath, she found that Hagrid had enlarged the hole in the First Chamber through the power of fists and apparently knocked Pili Psusennes out cold. She felt bad for Pili, but it was probably necessary — she should have known Hagrid wouldn't be much good with riddles. She wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten past the Runic Tiles Room (probably leaping over it), but she found him crouching near Apophis, already tending to his wound with his trusty umbrella. The literal gentle giant's eyes were watering.

"Who did'is to ye?" he was muttering to the snake. "Who'd hurt a real beauty like yeh? Here, here… ol'Hagrid'll fix yeh up, don't fuss…"

"Is… is he going to be alright?" Hermione asked.

"Aye, I think so," he answered. "'m pretty good at fixing 'em reptiles up… 'tll take a bit o'work though. That's seriously dark magic right here, this wound, yeh know."

"Right," she nodded. "Well, good luck. I still do have to head off Malfoy."

"Malfoy?" Hagrid said, his anger suddenly swelling. "The Malfoy tyke? _He_ did this?!"

"I think so," she explained, "but look, I haven't time right now."

Quickly, she pushed the gate to Sirius Black's room open and closed it behind her.

From the general chaos, it was clear Sirius's creations had fought bravely, though the ottoman had been cleaved in two. Sirius himself was nowhere to be sen two Slytherins — Gregory Goyle and Pansy Parkinson — were still held in place by the animated armchairs' muscled arms.

"Let us go, you brainless appliances!" the struggling Parkinson demanded.

"What's appliance means?" Goyle asked his housemate.

"Gah!" the Slytherin girl vented, "of all Slytherins to be trapped with, why did it have to be you… you pithecanthrope?!…"

"Hello," said Hermione, making her presence known to the other two students, "where are the others?"

"What? How long have _you_ been here, Granger?" asked Parkinson, stretching her neck to face Hermione despite being tied in the other direction.

"Since you ask," she said, smiling at her opponents' predicament, "I only just got here, what about you?"

" _Too long_ ," answered Parkinson. "Now come on, Granger, you've had your fun. Tell these abominations to let us _go_."

"Nuhuh," Hermione answered, "too busy. I repeat. Where are the others? What happened to the Guardian?"

" _Let us go!_ " Parkinson simply insisted, in which she was joined by Goyle.

"Oh fine, be that way," said Hermione, walking past the two Slytherins. "I suppose they're all in the next room?"

"They… they gotta be," said Goyle, suddenly looking a little scared "but we ain't heard nothing from the other side o'that door. Not since da boss an'the others an'the ghost came through. Ya… ya be careful, Granger."

"Moron!" seethed Parkinson. "Why did you have to tell her that?"

Goyle took a solid twenty seconds of thinking to understand what the Slytherin girl meant by that, and then looked sheepish.

Hermione took a long look at the closed, unassuming wooden door leading to the Marauder Grandmasters' Room. Slowly, she turned the handle and opened it.

Nothing could possibly have prepared her for the sight that awaited. It was obvious that Fred and George had put their everything into the room. It was an explosion of vibrant colors, of sounds, of music, of crazed laughter. There were bombs and trumpets and balloons and confetti and vaults and fireworks and pianos and even a seal or two and —

And in the middle of it all, one presumed-dead Marauder and four Slytherins, splattered with colors, their robes partially transfigured into clown suits, being kicked and dragged from one corner of the cartoon chaos to another by the swirling mass of miscellaneous objects, and yet inexplicably bursting with laughter.

" _Where's a Dementor when you need one_ ," thought Hermione, who still hadn't stepped through the threshold. "…Right. Sirius! Come on, get out of here! I think the room can handle the Slytherins on its own!"

Sirius just kept laughing and laughing.

" _Sirius_!" she called more imperiously.

There must have been some sort of permanent Cheering Charm on the Chamber, rather than just some type of laughing gas as Hermione had assumed, because Sirius answered through his laughter, right as a clown-like puppet hit him on the head with a mallet that comically bounced back:

"Why would I leave hehehere? It's sohoho much fuuun! Woopee!"

"Ugh," Hermione sighed. "Let me see… _Accio Sirius's Left Shoe!_ "

Ever since her fiasco with the Summoning Charm on the train, way back in her First Year, Hermione had routinely practiced the Charm to gain full mastery of it. She felt a little silly for that pettiness, but this was how she was, and it was serving her well today. Sirius was immediately dragged out of the room by his left foot. As he left the aura of hilarious influence, the Marauder's laughter subsided, though he kept a goofy grin all his own.

"Merlin's mustache!" he said, panting. "Those Weasleys really are worthy heirs…"

But Hermione, thinking back to poor Apophis in the previous Chamber, looked grim.

"And Malfoy really is an evil git. He really, really is."


	27. Christmas with the Fudges

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _…Merlin's crooked elbow, this chapter had to be dragged before you kicking and screaming. But I did it! …So yes, I am aware that the Grangers and the Dysons and the Nettles aren't featured much in this story, and I might have taken Christmas as an opportunity to show you some more of them, but ever since I found out Cornelius Fudge actually had a family, I have wanted to show them to you. So here they are, or at least, here's how I imagine them (Mrs Rowling may have different ideas). As always, thanks to everyone who followed, favorited and reviewed, and please, keem them lovely notifications coming — especially of the latter sort! I always love reviews, good or bad!_

 **Chapter XXV: _Christmas with the Fudges_**

For once in her life, Hermione Granger was not really looking forward to Christmas Eve. Oh, she'd get presents, that was for certain. Yet Christmas Eve itself — well —

She was spending Christmas Dinner at Cornelius Fudge's house.

Those sorts of social niceties were to be expected, as close as she'd (almost unwittingly) become to the United Kingdom's Minister for Magic. Hermione's rational side kept insisting that refusing would put her and Fudge's 'friendship' at risk, and that 'friendship' was essential if she was to steer the Wizarding World in the right direction despite itself. Her rational side _was_ insisting.

But every other fiber of her being kept yelling at her to run away and never return.

It wasn't really that Minister Cornelius Oswald Fudge was unpleasant, or mean, or even dumb in any pronounced way. It was that Fudge was just about the most biased, backwards, confusing human being Hermione had ever seen. The Malfoys and the Turban at least had the decency of making _sense_ — they had a goal, a goal that was entirely south of what everybody else wanted, but a goal; and they pursued that goal in an overall straightforward fashion. Fudge… didn't seem like he _wanted_ anything in particular at any given moment, save to generally stay popular and in power. He was the very definition of bumbling, often acting on a whim, just to be seen doing something rather than because he actually had anything to do.

At a sprightly 53 years old, Cornelius Fudge was a _toddler_. A toddler in dress robes and a bright green bowler, who constantly had to be told what to do — but _gently_ , or else he'd throw a tantrum and there would be nothing to do.

Holding up a conversation with Cornelius Fudge would, undoubtedly, be _exhausting_. And this was coming from Hermione Granger, who rather liked talking.

But it had to be done.

Sighing, Hermione checked the golden clock of Gryffindor Tower, and, as it was nearly time, she said goodbye to her friends and went to the Headmaster's Office. Dumbledore had left a silver snuffbox of Floo Powder open on the mantelpiece. Hermione steeled herself (this was her first time taking the Floo on her own like that), took a handful of it, threw it into the fire, and asked for the _Home of Cornelius Fudge_.

A moment later, she'd stumbled forward onto a thick emerald-colored carpet.

"Eep!" said a nasal voice. "Master! The guest of Cornelius Fudge is being arrived!"

Hermione got back to her feet and looked around, just in time to catch a glimpse of the House-Elf who'd spoken scurrying out of sight. She was in a corridor with blue wallpaper, the whole length of which was covered with the fluffy green carpet. Behind her was the ornate stone fireplace she'd come out of. Judging from the fact that it took up the dead end of the corridor, and the presence of that soft carpet, it was clear this corridor was meant solely for Floo visitors. Perhaps all wizarding homes had one like that — it's not like wizards really needed fireplaces for anything else.

There were frames hanging on the walls, but not paintings — instead, they held newspaper clippings that documented the career of Cornelius Fudge. The issue of the _Daily Prophet_ that had heralded Fudge's election was, of course, framed in gold.

"Ah! Miss Granger!" said Fudge, jolting her out of her observation. "And you're just on time, too… Happy Christmas, very happy indeed!"

Hermione gingerly shook the Minister's offered hand.

"Happy Christmas," she said with a small smile.

"Good, good…" said the joyful politician. "Well, if you would follow me — the dining room is over there —"

"Oh, we're going to eat right now, then?" Hermione asked, rather pleased. "I must say that's a welcome change. At most Christmas parties I have been to, so much time is spent on mindless chatter and exchange of pleasantries… everyone is nearly starving by the time one gets to the entrées, you see?"

"Well, that may be so among Muggles, my dear," Fudge said with pride, "but Amaryllis has worked wonders, not to mention Pompy… and besides, there aren't many guests, just a few relatives of mines. All the _official_ meetings, I had kept them for the luncheon today… You must realize that for most wizards of a certain — _standing_ , family dinner are simply a must."

"Amaryllis?" Hermione asked curiously. "Pompy?"

"Amaryllis?" said Fudge. "Oh! You don't know her… She's my wife, of course, but — you'll meet her soon enough — here we are."

And Fudge finally opened the door to his dining room. Hermione felt there must have been a quicker way there, and Fudge had taken the most sinuous one imaginable just so he could show off his quite posh interior. And it was certainly nice, though not always to Hermione's tastes, but now she was hungry.

As the Minister had announced, it was a rather intimate party. Aside from Cornelius and herself, there were five people sitting around the well-set dining table. They broke out in polite, smiling greetings when they saw their host coming back with the last, 'mystery' guest.

"Good witches and wizards," said Fudge, a little dramatically perhaps, "may I introduce my young and dear friend, Miss Hermione Granger."

Blushing, Hermione resisted an inexplicable urge to curtsy and instead gave a polite nod.

"And Miss Granger, I would like you to meet my wife Amaryllis —"

Amaryllis Fudge returned a warm smile. She was a good-looking woman, if perhaps a bit portly, with fair hair tied up in a bun. She wore dark blue robes with more frills and ribbons than Hermione felt was necessary, and likewise perhaps a little too much make-up; but overall she seemed nice.

"— our dear daughter Clementine —"

A young witch in her twenties, Clementine Fudge was picking at her empty porcelain plate with her fork, looking utterly bored. She perked up somewhat when she met Hermione's gaze, but soon returned to her ennui.

"— my brother, Clifford, he's the Head of the Portkey Office —"

A somewhat younger-looking man than Cornelius, Clifford Fudge had a tiny grey mustache and slicked hair. If at all possible, he was even more a caricature of a self-satisfied bureaucrat than Cornelius had ever been. That being said, he seemed harmless, and genially shook Hermione's hand.

"— his wife Gwen, she's a relative of Professor Slughorn, you know —"

Gwen Fudge née Slughorn did have a faint resemblance to the Professor Slughorn Hermione had met, mostly in how she smiled; but she was thankfully far less rotund. Her hair was short and brown, and she wore unassuming dark brown robes.

"— and this is my nephew Rufus, you might have seen him around Hogwarts, I believe he's a year under you."

"Rufus is a _Slytherin_!" added Rufus's beaming mother.

Rufus Fudge was indeed a boy around her age, a little round around the edges. Much like Clementine, Rufus looked as though he'd rather be elsewhere, but he had a less obvious manner of showing it. He was currently engaged in trying to Charm his fork for… _something_. Hermione said "Hi!" to him, which he returned without even looking at her.

"And now, well, let us begin," said Cornelius. He clapped his hands together. "Pompy?"

The tubby House-Elf in question popped out of thin air at his Master's command, holding large plates full of refined food that he set on the table. Hermione was among the firsts to tucker in, and soon the entire Fudge family was delighting in the excellent cooking of Amaryllis and the Elf.

For what little the Fudges spoke, they chatted among themselves, paying her little mind. Hermione was seated between Cornelius and Clementine.

"So, erm, what do you do, anyway?" she asked conversationally.

"Uh…" hesitated the young woman, "well, Papa wants me to get into politics like him, but to tell the truth… I'm thinking of getting an internship with Mr Kiddell."

"Kiddell?" Hermione repeated questioningly; she didn't recognize the name.

"Jimmy Kiddell. He's a wandmaker in Diagon Alley," Clementine explained.

"Ah?" Hermione said with interest. "I thought Ollivanders was the only wand shop in London."

"Yeah, I guess books would say that," answered Clementine. "It only opened a few years ago… He's been making good business, too. I mean, not as good as Ollivander, obviously, especially considering Ollivander has subventions from the Ministry to make his wands cheaper."

"But… I mean, why?" she asked again. "The Ollivanders are certainly competent, and as far as I know he's having no trouble meeting demand."

"Sure," agreed Clementine, "but, well, Ji-I mean Mr Kiddell looks at it this way: Ollivander's the only wandcrafting shop in Britain. The _only_ one. I mean, Dumbledore and a few other geniuses could probably fix up a wand in a bind, but… imagine if some magical accident exploded the Ollivander building, or something. Britain would be _without a wandmaker_. That's just ridiculous."

Hermione had to agree. Still, she argued:

"Britain isn't the only country in the world, though, is it? Couldn't a British mage just hop over to France or something if they need a new wand, until a new wandmaker is trained?"

"I guess," granted Clementine, "but… you just _know_ foreigners like Gregorovitch would take advantage of that to make the British pay more. Nah. Monopolies are never good."

"I suppose you're right," said Hermione, returning to eating her delicious turkey drumstick.

A few minutes later, however, Gwen Fudge remembered she existed, and leaned towards her over the table.

"…And how _do_ you know Cornelius and Amaryllis, precisely?" Gwen asked.

Hermione eyed Cornelius Fudge nervously. How much could she tell his family about their… _arrangement_? Fudge didn't strike her as the type to be entirely honest, even to his family, about owing his successful tenure to a schoolgirl. Indeed, to save himself the embarrassment, it was Fudge who answered the question, for all that it had obviously been directed at Hermione:

"Well, she's a bright young witch, you know," he explained, "she helped with the entire Lycanthropy thing… She's the one who got an Order of Merlin, you remember? And as I like to get a fresh perspective on things, well, sometimes I ask her what she thinks about this or that in Ministry affairs… to get a sense of youth's outlook, you understand?"

Hermione had to hand it to Cornelius that his years in Slytherin had not been _entirely_ wasted. She could hardly have fabricated a better approximation of the truth that still painted Fudge in a positive light.

"But then —" said Gwen, ruffling her son's hair, "Rufus, you little mystery-maker! You must know her, from Hogwarts, you simply _must_ , I can't imagine you not have seen her… How aren't you two friends yet?"

"But mum…" groaned Rufus Fudge, "she's a _Gryffindor_ … and she keeps bothering Draco Malfoy's Legionnaires, too…"

"I'm sorry, did you say Legionnaires?" asked Hermione in confusion.

"Er, yeah," answered Fudge, "a little while ago Draco decided his minions are called the Doom Legions of the Green Peacock."

"Green Peacock, huh," Hermione said, unimpressed. "Well, I'll just have to pretend this drumstick is from a peacock, then."

She bit viciously into the meat

"See! _See_ , mum?" said the alarmed Rufus. " _That'_ s what she does! She… she… Professor Snape warned us to stay away from her! _Professor Snape!_ "

"Miss Granger, is this true?" asked Clifford Fudge, finally looking up from his plate, which had been the center of his attention so far.

"Oh come now, Clifford, Rufus," tempered Cornelius, trying to salvage the Christmas cheer, "it's nothing, just a bit of Hogwarts rivalry, harmless pranking, nothing at all…"

"Well, it's definitely pranking," Hermione said truthfully. She wouldn't tell a lie unless she had to, and Junior Marauders were in truth anything but harmless.

"See? See?" Fudge said with a forced smile. There was a long blank. "Erm… Pompy? Maybe you might bring out the cheese?"

"Yes, Master Sir!" said the Elf, and he brought back a large silver platter full of expensive cheeses.

Hermione knew quite a bit about cheese, because Daniel Granger so happened to be a noted cheese enthusiast. Brie de Meaux, Livarot and Bleu d'Auvergne had no secrets for Hermione, and she was quite sad that Nettle (nor than any other snake) could not digest dairy products. And yet most of the cheeses on the platter were quite unknown to her; it would appear wizards had, thanks to magic, perfected their own varieties.

To her surprise, no bread was provided with the cheese; she'd eaten cheese bare before, but it was surprisingly informal for a family like the Fudges. But then, she realized the truth of it: eating cheese on bread was mostly a way to make a small bit of cheese last longer, because cheese was expensive. Multiplying the quantity of food was trivial for a competent wizard, so trying to only use a _small quantity_ of a given ingredient was a foreign concept to wizardkind.

And the cheese _was_ quite delicious.

"It's true, though," said Mrs Fudge, spoiling the good mood, "it's quite sad, those rivalries between Slytherins and Gryffindors. Thank Merlin _I_ was a Hufflepuff."

Fudge bristled slightly; it seemed he didn't like to be reminded of his wife's House in public.

"I heard Draco and his little friends got into some trouble, lately, too," the witch added. "You wouldn't have heard about that, would you, Miss… Miss… well, would you?"

Hermione put down her fork and presented her best smile to Mrs Fudge.

"I have, actually," she said. "Quite closely. _Draco_ and his _friends_ decided to sneak into a restricted area of the Castle. Restricted for _good reason_ , at that. There was a… valuable magical creature kept there, whom the children, in their — _recklessness_ — gravely injured."

"Merlin's beard!" gasped Clifford.

"Cool…" Rufus said dreamily.

Even Clementine seemed to look up and look mildly interested.

"Well," Cornelius forced a chuckle, "I suppose children will be children, no matter how one raises them… no offense to you, Clementine, of course."

"And naughty children will get detentions," Hermione added with a somewhat sadistic smile. "Long detentions. With Professor Snape. For months. On Sunday."

"…Yes, I… suppose they will," Fudge said, somewhat confused. "Erm, I hope the creature was capably healed, hm?"

"Yes, thank you for asking," Hermione answered. "He's quite alright now, all thanks to Hagrid."

"Ah yes… Hagrid…" Fudge said, affecting to be lost in thought as he cut himself a very big slice of some sort of green munster. "I've been giving some thought, you know, Miss Granger — to your suggestion of… pardoning the old boy."

"I… believe the term I used was 'clear him of all charges'," Hermione said deadpanly.

"That may be," granted Fudge, "but the end result would be the same, wouldn't it…? And as I recall, Hagrid, bless his beard, wouldn't really know the difference between all those legal terms… the point is, it might be more politically advantageous to _pardon_ him. If it's all the same to Mr Hagrid, I would rather not give the public the impression that the Ministry hasn't been handling legal matters with all due care, you see?"

"Of course," Hermione said, forcing a smile. "You're the Minister… you know best."

"One likes to think so," Fudge chuckled with a smug look. All the family applauded.

In truth, she would much rather have Hagrid cleared of all charges — justice demanded it. Still, one mustn't upset one's pet minister too much in one evening, and there was _some_ truth to Cornelius's words.

Just then, the sight of the Fudges' Christmas tree out of the corner of her eye reminded Hermione that it was, in fact, Christmas.

She got an idea.

* * *

A wool-gloved hand was banging on a wooden door.

"Wha'? Wha'?" came the sleepy voice of a certain gigantic groundskeeper.

The door opened, revealing the Keeper of the Keys of Hogwarts in his fur nightgown and sombrero-sized sleeping cap.

"Oh, 'ts yeh, Hermione?" said Hagrid in surprise. "Er, hello, but, uhm… 's about one in the mornin', yeh know tha'? I got to get me some sleepin' sometimes, jus'like everybody else, yeh know!"

"I'm sorry, but, Hagrid," Hermione said, beaming, "merry Christmas."

In Hermione's hand was a piece of parchment. It wasn't all that small, but it looked positively minute as the Half-Giant picked it up with his large paws and held it up to his face.

" _I_ ," Hagrid read aloud, " _Cornelius Fudge,… he-hereby… perdon…_ "

His eyes widened.

"Blimey! How on Earth did yeh get this, Hermione? Oh, Merlin, 'f only mah da' coulda seen tha'…"

Tears were welling up in the Half-Giant's big brown eyes. He put the precious parchment down on his hut's single table and embraced the teenage girl in a grateful hug.

"Yeh can' know how much this means teh me…" he said, "thank yeh, bless yer heart, Hermione — 'm goin' ter take mah O.W.L.s for real, and 'm going ter be a real wizard and a real Professor and… oh, thank yeh… and merry Christmas!"


	28. Meeting a Wolf

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Okay! After a mildly difficult patch, I'm back in the flow. It took me a while to decide which creature to feature in Hagrid's lesson, because I'm sure we're all sick of The Hippogriffs Scene, and anyway, I'm sure you wouldn't expect poor Buckbeak to come out in the snow. So there. As always, thanks to the Favoriters, Followers, and especially Reviewers!_

 **Chapter XXVI: _Meeting a Wolf_**

Without too much further fuss, the Christmas holidays came to an end. Hermione had, as expected, mostly received books from her various friends and relations. From Hagrid, she had received a little wooden doghouse, roughly but prettily adorned with carvings of herself; a note in big scratchy letters explained that it was meant to house Earl Gray. The Transfigured teapot was offered this new housing and seemed to appreciate it, inasmuch as one could tell with a tortoise.

When classes started again, they did so quietly enough. In the corridors pointedly avoided Draco Malfoy and his Peacock Troopers of whatever they called themselves, and likewise did her best not to run into Rufus Fudge.

The real surprise was announced (in a surprisingly straightforward manner) by Professor Dumbledore on Friday at dinner. In addition to being Keeper of the Keys of Hogwarts, Rubeus Hagrid would now serve as the school's Professor for Care of Magical Creatures, replacing Professor Kettleburn. (The _Daily Prophet_ had recently documented that poor old Silvanus was interned at St Mungo's from an overdose of Calming Draught.)

* * *

Thus, on the next Wednesday, the Third-Year Gryffindors and Slytherins were gathered by Professor Hagrid's oversized hut, waiting expectantly. As Hagrid was apparently late, the students soon did what students do best, that is to say chitter noisily.

Among the loudest, of course, was Malfoy, who was very ostentatiously telling his henchpeople about how dubious he was of "Professor" Hagrid.

"I mean," the obnoxious peacock was saying, "I suppose we _do_ need commoners like him, if only to make the _real_ wizards look good, but I think Dumbledore's finally gone completely senile if he for one moment believes that —"

Draco suddenly stopped when he felt a wand poking into his back.

"Yes, Malfoy?" Hermione said with her predatory smile. "I believe we discussed your treatment of my friends in the past? I hope you are aware that this also accounts for _verbal_ treatment?"

"—if," Draco continued smoothly with the most forced smile his minions had ever seen, "he for one moment believes anyone would be more suited to the job than our beloved _friend_ the great big wonderful Professor Hagrid —"

"Don't overdo it," sighed Hermione as she drew away back into the group of Gryffindors.

"What do you think Hagrid's going to be teaching about?" asked Maximilian. "I know you always read ahead."

"I would have assumed it would be Hippogriffs," Hermione said, "but he wouldn't make them come out in January. Hippogriffs despise snow, you see. Perhaps Salamanders. I am rather hoping for Alizors or Gringwart-Goffs, though. The textbooks do say they're on the curriculum, and they're _sapient_ , nonhuman creatures — can you imagine —"

"Well, I think the wonder of the idea is rather lost on me," said the Boggart with a sly smile.

"…Ah yes," Hermione said, her smile falling. "…That was actual good human humor, by the way. Well done!"

"I learned from the best," Maximilian answered politely.

This was when Hagrid arrived, plodding through the snow, a big fur cloak wrapped over his wardrobe-sized shoulders.

"Hello there!" the new Professor began. "For those o'you who'd somehow don't know me, mah name's 'fessor Rubeus Hagrid. Though you can call me just plain Hagrid, tha's what I'm used teh. Now, today we're goin' ter be studyin' some might interestin' creatchers called —"

"Hagrid?" Hermione interrupted.

"Er, yeah? What's it, Miss Granger?"

"You forgot the roll-call!" she mouthed.

"Oh — oh!" said Hagrid, fumbling with his coat, looking for the list. "Righ', righ', I forgot… uh…"

There was a pause. Hagrid blushed.

"I forgot it," he admitted, sheepish.

"It's alright, it happens," Hermione reassured the Professor, patting his large gloved hand.

Draco snickered. Hermione shot him a glare and he immediately stopped.

"Right," said Hagrid, "well, I'll assume in good faith that yer all here. If any folks aren't, well, it's their loss, innit? The point o'the lesson is going ter be…"

The Professor left the class in suspense for a few moments.

"…Wolves."

Draco didn't snicker. Pike did, however. Before Hermione could even glare at him, a terrified Draco elbowed the taller Slytherin, who stopped at once.

"…Er, wolves?" asked Lilith Moon, dubious. "…Those aren't really magical creatures."

"They are _too_!" Hagrid answered, looking almost offended. Then his face brightened: "Oh, yeh mean _wolves_!"

"Didn't you _say_ wolves?" Maximilian said, blinking rapidly. "Just now?"

"Nah!" Hagrid chuckled. "Ah said _Wolves_."

"I don't get this guy," Sally-Anne observed.

"See, fellers, wolves and Wolves are mighty diff'rent things," Hagrid explained. "A wolf's just yer garden-variety canine… beautiful creatures, mind, noble and faithful, sadly misunderstood, they are, but they don't have no place in the curriculum, yer right, Miss… Moon? Moon. Only, add a capital W t'the name, and yeh get Wolves, and Wolves, they're mighty magical."

"Spelling," Harry playfully moaned. " _Hagrid_ got us on _spelling_. Hermione, did you see that coming?"

{ _I have to admit I didn't_ ,} Hermione answered — in Parseltongue, to be more discreet. { _But shhh. Listen to him. This is class, you know!_ }

"Now Wolves, they're a pretty uncommon sorta creature, see," Hagrid went on. "I believe yer all familiar'th Werewolves? 'd be surprisin' if yeh weren't, considerin' the whole thing'th 'fessor Lupin few months ago. Right?"

The Gryffindors and Slytherins nodded in a cacophony of 'Yes's.

"Right," said the Half-Giant. "Well, I'm not sayin' it's somethin' that should ever hafta happen, but once'r twice in Time, there was Werewolves of opposite genders who met while they was transformed, see. An' they, well, yeh know, they mated."

Half of the students joined Draco in snickering while the other half looked a bit sick. (The first half was mostly boys and the second half mostly girls, though there was a bit of both.) The exceptions were, of course, Maximilian, to whom organic mating was more of an exotic curiosity, and Hermione. Not only was Hermione too busy wondering how what Hagrid was getting at fit with what she knew of the Werewolf Curse, but copulation was nothing too special to her either as a topic. She knew better than to mention it in human company, but snakes discussed it freely and she'd never thought anything of that.

"An' the results, nine months later… the critters we called Wolves," Hagrid finished. "They look like yer regular forest wolves, true, but they're mighty different. They're _clever_ , see, nearly as clever as us regular folks I reckon. An' they got a bit of magic, too. O'course, they can't use wands like we do, but —"

Hagrid's lecture was interrupted by a howl coming from the Forest.

"Ah," he said with a little smile, "that'll be ol'Toft now, I expect."

To the shrieks and whimpers of a lot of the students — although strangely enough, that didn't include Neville — a large wolf stepped forward from the shadows of the Forest. His fur was dark grey and his eyes yellow.

Hermione didn't quite see what was so _scary_ about a wolf; a wolf was essentially a dog of average size. But this wolf — this wolf had an air of _power_. Not of primal strength and ferocity, no; it was a very human, regal sort of air. It was visible in the way it — no — the way _he_ walked, the way he held himself.

Toft walked steadily until he was a few paces away from the students, who were now huddled around Hagrid. Hagrid himself broke through the tiny crowd and came to face Toft, bowing slightly. Toft returned the gesture.

"Now," said Hagrid, turning back to the students, "I'd like you to meet Toft. Toft's the leader o'the Forbidden Forest's Wolf Pack, yeh know. He's important. Treat'im with respect."

"Respect!" spat Pansy Parkinson, who seemed particularly distraught by the creature's appearance. "We'd have to pay respect to a — to a _beast_ like that?! I say kill it! _Kill it!_ "

Draco placed a hand on Pansy's shoulder.

"Pansy," he said, "I know this is all absurd, but _please_ don't provoke it. …Or _her_."

This seemed to have no effect on the hysterical girl, however.

" _Kill it!_ " she repeated, gripping her wand. "Hagrid! Kill it now!"

Toft's features had been changing to a snarl as the girl spoke.

"Now see here," said Hagrid, growing angrier, "Toft is a mighty'n noble creature, and I won't have yeh insultin' him, is that clear? That's ten points from Slytherin, it is!"

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT BLOODY POINTS!" shrieked Pansy. "TAKE IT AWAY! _KILL IT!_ "

" _Pansy!_ " ordered Draco, trying to hold her in place. "Calm! Down!"

"You _cowards_!" screamed the Slytherin, tearing herself away from Draco's hold. "If no one else will _do_ something, I — I — gah!"

She aimed her wand at the Wolf and cast: " _Diffindo!"_

Toft dodged her curse and locked his gaze with hers. There was a loud noise and Pansy was flung backwards, several feet away; Hagrid caught her before she could land in the snow. He helped her to her feet, but as soon as he let go, she simply let herself slump down, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Now — er, look, it's — erm…" Hagrid stammered, not knowing what to say. "Malfoy! Yeh take yer friend to the Hospital Wing, alright? Or Professor Snape come teh think of it. Just… go, take her."

Malfoy, quite happy to have an out from the lesson, nodded quickly. He helped Pansy get up for the second time, and the two Slytherins walked briskly towards the Castle.

"Now see," said Hagrid, "this's what I was tellin' yeh about. That here was a Wolf's version of what yeh'd know as the Knockback Jinx — _Flipendo_. And Miss Parkinson's lucky Toft didn't mean no harm, too, because a Wolf can do spells that're a lot meaner'n _that_."

Toft slightly puffed his chest at that. Hermione wondered once again how much the Wolves understood of human speech. Certainly, the Post Owls seemed to understand it, and they were closer than anything else to the Wolves, from what Hagrid had said.

"Now, what I wan' yeh to do is — yes, Ha — Mr Potter?"

"Do they understand English?"

Good, thought Hermione. She was rubbing off on Harry. About time, too.

"Ah, well," Hagrid answered, "I don't know how well a given Wolf would — they have their own language and all, yeh know. But Toft sure does. Most common phrases, 'tleast. Don'tcha, old boy?"

Toft nodded approvingly.

"Right," said Hagrid, "well what I want yeh all t'do is to come'n introducer yerself t'Toft. Nothin' fancy for now, jest come and introduce yerself an'try ter make a good impression. Th'basics of Wolf politeness are, stand straight but not too straight, keep yer eyes on him, and don't open yer mouth too wide. Everyone got that?"

Everyone nodded.

"Right, right," said Hagrid. "So we'll start with…"

The look on the Half-Giant's face, plain as day, showed that he'd just remembered the fact that he didn't have the list.

"Ah, blast it," he said, "jest start, whoever wants ter do it."

After a moment of hesitation, Hermione began stepping forward but was pushed aside by Ron Weasley.

"You just wait, I can do it!" he whispered as he passed her by.

Oh my, did Ron think he was being great and dashing there? Not that he wasn't courageous and reliable in general, but introducing oneself to a friend of Hagrid's didn't seem like it took that much bravery. Well, unless that friend was a dragon or a giant spider, but that would have been another case entirely.

In any event, the adventurous red-haired youth walked confidently to face Toft. He bowed, perhaps a little too low. He gulped as the yellow eyes of the alpha Wolf bore into him.

"…Hello, sir," he finally said. "Um… my name is Ron Weasley. …Ronald Bilius Weasley. Er. I'm a student here at Hogwarts, a Gryffindor… uh… I like Quidditch and chess… I've got nothing against wolves, in fact I think you look wicked cool. I, I hope you don't mind me. Taking up your. Surely. Valuable. …Time. …?"

Toft continued to stare at Ron, unblinking, for a little while. Finally, the Wolf blinked at him once and opened his mouth to let out a small yap. When Toft opened his eyes again, there was a light of amusement there.

"Right!" said Hagrid, clapping his hands. "Good, very good, R- W- Mr Weasley. That's five points ter Gryffindor, fer that and fer goin' first. Who's next?"

This time, Hermione started walking unquestioned, but Hagrid stopped her:

"Er, best be a Slytherin this time," he said. He added with an amused expression: "We Gryffindors, we're the brave ones, ain't we? If I let you choose, all the Gryffindors'll be on first and no Slytherin'll have had time to have a go by the end o'the class."

There was uncomfortable shifting in the ranks of the Slytherins. They were all giving each other searching looks.

It took a moment for Hermione to realize what was happening.

Draco Malfoy was gone.

Normally, with Slytherin being what it was and Malfoy being who he was, his minions (who made up about three quarters of Third-Year Slytherin) would have looked to him to know who was to go first. It would be Malfoy himself if going made him look good, Zabini or Pike if Malfoy needed someone competent on the job, Crabbe or Goyle if he thought it might be dangerous, and so on and so forth.

But now all those minions were wondering if one of them should go, and preventing the others from going first because it would be losing face; and the Doom Legionnaires of the Green Peacock losing face meant Malfoy losing face by proxy; and Malfoy losing face because of them meant he would throw a tantrum in the evening. And nobody wanted _that_ — not the Legionnaires, not the other Slytherins, and _certainly_ not Professor Snape.

"Well, come on!" Hagrid urged. "Toft's got other things t'do, yeh know!

Finally, it was Daphne Greengrass who stepped forward. Hermione knew Daphne for not smirking and sneering. Perhaps she had a friendlier disposition than her classmates. Or perhaps she was just bad at sneering and smirking. Hermione didn't know, nor particularly care.

"Mr Toft," Greengrass said without the faintest trace of emotion, "greetings, my name is Daphne Greengrass, I am a Slytherin, I have no particular preconceptions on wolves. I don't seek to disturb you or yours, nor have anything much to do with you at all."

At this display, Toft didn't stare at Daphne like he'd stared ar Ron — rather, he looked expectantly, as if waiting for more. When none came, he briefly flicked his ears in what looked like annoyance, and huffed to send her on her way. This was all Greengrass had been waiting for, and she quickly faded back into the relative anonymity of the tight group of Slytherins.

"…Well," Hagrid said, somewhat confused, "that… could have done with a bit more warmth, Miss… Greengrass, is it? But not bad. Honorable. …A Gryffindor now?"

Again Hermione prepared to step forward — at least it would give her a reason to stretch her legs, standing around in the snow was getting _tiring_ — but Hagrid then added:

"Neville lad! And why don't you give it a try?"

Neville Longbottom was that shy boy with the runaway toad. There was one of these in every class, in Hermione's (admittedly limited) experience. A nice, mousy boy who stayed in the back and looked as inconspicuous as possible, in the faint hope the teachers would forget his existence and not ask him anything. As far as these went, Neville was… friendly enough.

Apparently Harry got along well with him.

Hermione felt a twinge at the idea that between all her friends and acquaintances, she didn't have enough time to devote to each, so that they were forced to make new friends of their own. Without her.

Oh, well, it couldn't be helped, and there were worse things in the world than to have one's friends become socially successful.

Once he realized his cover of being a random background character was blown, Neville made his way to Toft with a surprising lack of hesitation.

"Hi there," Neville told the Wolf, smiling and waving a hand. "My name's Neville Longbottom. I'm a Gryffindor, and as a student I'm the least useless at Herbology and Defence Against the Dark Arts. I kinda like the Forest, like I think you must, so, er, I hope we can be friends."

This time Toft showed actual mirth, at least to someone who could read canine expressions. His mouth was hanging open and (most tellingly) his tail wagging slightly.

"Wow, thanks!" said Neville, who could, indeed, read the signs. "Well, I guess I'll try to speak to you later, there are other students who've got to meet you first. Bye!"

As Neville returned to Harry, Ron and Hermione's side, Hagrid cheered:

"Very good! _Very_ good! That's the spirit! Ten points ter Gryffindor!"

Neville's housemates echoed these compliments, Hermione and Harry among them.

"Oh, well," Neville said, blushing, "he's just like a dog, you know? Big, furry, friendly… dog. Or wolf. Same thing. I like dogs. They make friends without fuss… They don't mind if you don't make sense talking to them. Er. That's all there is to it really."

"Don't sell yourself short, mate," Ron insisted. "It's a true Gryffindor who can stare at those eyes and not go to pieces, and I'm speaking from experience."

Hagrid had been crouching besides Toft, 'speaking' to him about something or other. Having finished his chat, he turned back to the kids, who reluctantly stopped their own friendly chats:

"Right, next! A Slytherin, please!"

After some debate it was Vincent Crabbe who was picked. Crabbe looked just as awkward as when Hermione had 'interrogated' him some weeks prior.

"…'lo. 'm Crabbe. I'm a henchman. Pureblood. You're a wolf. …So what?"

Toft snorted at him and made eye-contact with him. A flicker in the air, and Crabbe's hair turned purple. It took a moment for the Slytherin boy to notice, and when he did, he simply put his hands over it and walked back into the ranks.

While the Slytherins tried without much hurry to undo the jinx on their comrade, the Gryffindors watched with bemused amusement.

"Wha'?" Hagrid chuckled. "Wolves have a sense o'humor, same as the rest of us, yeh know. …And fer Merlin's sake, Crabbe, yer gonna have to _try_ sometime, yeh know that? Yer O.W.L.s ain't gonna pass themselves. So yeh might as well start here."

Crabbe muttered some sort of "Yessir" without even turning to look at Hagrid, still pawing uselessly at his violet bowler-cut.

Hermione was about halfway through towards Toft when Hagrid announced:

"Right! I'm sorry, but that's all fer today, I've got an appointment with Professor McGonagall. See yeh all next week!"


	29. Mind Arts

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _Long-overdue Occlumency is long-overdue. Anyways, keep those lovely reviews coming! That's the safest way to make sure you'll get more of this story, you know._

 **Chapter XXVII: _Mind Arts_**

"Albus, I just don't think much of Divination."

Dumbledore looked up from his fiddling with his enchanted cuckoo clock. The clock had been insisting for days that it was the 38th of March, when in truth it was only the middle of February.

"And why would that be?" asked the Headmaster, looking outright puzzled. "Is the study of Fate itself not something worthy of our full attention?"

"Oh, I'm sure that would be very nice," she answered, "if it _worked_. By the way, you screwed that gear the wrong way around. Yes, the little golden one here. Right. But 'Professor' Trelawney has made one unambiguously true prediction this year — _one._ And that was the time she went out to go to the bathroom and told us she would return in five minutes."

The ancient wizard gently tapped his wand to the cuckoo clock, which closed itself and resumed ticking.

"That _is_ concerning, Hermione, but I—"

The animate cuckoo within the clock suddenly jumped out, hitting the Professor's nose, and screeched that it was the 28th of Noctempril.

Dumbledore and Hermione both pawed frantically around the moving, tiny wooden bird. Dumbledore sighed, flicked a finger at it, and the cuckoo was summoned to his hand as if by a magnet.

"Was that a wordless, wandless Summoning Charm?" Hermione said in amazement. "That's insanely hard! I—"

"You, my dear," Dumbledore said kindly but not without pride, "are a Third-Year schoolgirl, and I am a one-hundred-and-twelve-year-old Grand Sorcerer."

"So you keep reminding me," she admitted with a wry smile. "It's just so frustrating sometimes. I know so much already, but I _can do_ so very little…"

"Do not sell yourself short, Hermione," he replied. "Magical power is not everything, as you'll agree. Your influence on dear Cornelius, your intelligence, your knowledge… and, especially, I would argue, the devotion of your friends… all of these are so many different powers that you wield; and in the right circumstances, ones that can be much more precious than magic itself."

As he spoke, Dumbledore had nudged the wooden cuckoo bird back into its clockwork nest, reopened the clock, and was once again trying to rearrange its gears.

"That's easy for you to say!" she argued. "You have, or at least you used to have, all of those powers combined, _and_ magical proficiency that was unmatched until the Turban came along. I'm sorry, but you can't know what it's _like_ , to imagine all the wonderful spells you could cast with accuracy, and then to see the magic fizzle away and pop when you actually _try_. I… I don't even think I'll ever get to your level, or Riddle's, or, or even Harry's, I'm just not _good_ enough, I don't have the intuition…"

The wizard let go of his elegant pocket screwdriver to raise a palm, putting an end to her increasingly upset rambling.

"That will be quite enough," he said. "You have befriended the Boy Who Lived, Sirius Black himself, a Boggart, and the man you yourself consider to be one of the most powerful men on Earth. You have freed an enslaved Basilisk, solved Lycanthropy, and saved a man from the Dementor's Kiss. At fourteen years of age, you practically rule one of the most prominent wizarding nations. You are one of the simultaneously luckiest and most brilliant people ever to grace the halls of Hogwarts. And _you_ would complain about your lot in life?"

"I… I suppose you're right," said Hermione, trying to cool off her temper.

"…Would you perhaps like a bit of toffee?" suggested the Headmaster, regaining his cheerful demeanor. "It works wonders on poor Severus whenever I manage to convince him to take some."

She shook her head. Magic or no magic, her education as a child of dentists still argued against sweets' very existence. That was one of the few points she and Professor Dumbledore could never agree on.

"Too bad…" mused Dumbledore. Then he continued with a glimmer in his eye: "Well, all that I have said notwithstanding… if you truly wish to learn a unique magical skill… I believe there is a certain rare ability for which you might show some proclivity."

Hermione stopped breathing.

"Indeed," he continued, "it is something I should long ago have taught you and your friends… The resurfacing of Crouch the Younger has rekindled worries that your defeat of Tom had put to rest. Have you, in your readings, come across the Art of Legilimency?"

"Briefly," she answered. "Some sort of mind reading, I gather?"

"Yes," he said, "in essence. I would not have you learn it yourself, for it is an… uncouth habit, to prod around other people's minds. The issue, however, is that our enemies are likely trained it in it. And your precious mind, Hermione Granger, holds the great secret they seek. We cannot have it remain an open book for Bartemius Crouch Junior to peruse if he should find his way back to you."

"Ah…" Hermione nodded. "Then I suppose you mean to teach me some sort of protection against Legilimency?"

"You guess correctly," Dumbledore confirmed. "It is known as Occlumency and it — blast it all, still March the 38th? — it is best learn through experience. Thus, I would ask for your permission to use the Legilimens Spell on you, and you will attempt to resist."

"Now?" Hermione gasped. "But — I'm not prepared —"

"Neither would you be prepared," Dumbledore answered, "if Crouch Junior came bursting it and kidnapped you. Now — look into my eyes, yes, Legilimency requires eye contact, you see — _Legilimens!_ "

Hermione then felt the strangest thing. There was as if a foreign presence inside her mind, thinking other thoughts, feeling other feelings, of which echoes reached her consciousness. And suddenly she began thinking of what she had eaten for breakfast, quite against her will. The whole thing felt a lot like the Dementor's attack.

Having drawn this parallel, she tried to do what had almost worked on the wraith: focus on the one thought:

 _Go away. Get out. Go away._

But her train of thought, simple though that thought may be, found itself rerouted back to her breakfast. Bacon, buttered toast and _yes_ , we had been over this already, but bacon and buttered toast it was nonetheless, and she kept thinking back to it.

 _Go away!_

 _Buttered toast and bacon. Bacon and buttered toast._

 _Buttered bacon and baconed toast._

 _What?_

Oh, what was she supposed to be thinking? Ah, right! _Get out—_

 _Bacon and buttered toast?_

The then the presence receded. She blinked several times.

"I see your instincts push you towards the brute-force approach," Dumbledore remarked academically, "a pure battle of willpower. I'm afraid this works better on the Imperius Curse than on actual Legilimency."

"Ah," she acknowledged her mistake. "I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's quite alright —" he answered, "I saw what you were thinking, and your reasoning was quite commendable, if misguided. Now that you know what Legilimency feels like, here is what you must do: you must try to _mislead_ me. Do not pull away from the Legilimens's gaze, because he _will_ get you back where he wants you; but if you can make him _believe_ that he's already found what he seeks, he will not look further. Focus is important, but you must focus on _deceiving_ , you understand?"

"I think I do, Professor," she said. "That being said, I—"

But Dumbledore cut her off and cast: " _Legilimens_!"

Again the presence in her mind, sending thoughts of breakfast to her. For an instant she thought of her true breakfast, but — ah — deceive? She — breakfast — buttered bacon — _no_ — she began to picture herself at the Gryffindor Table, eating — buttered toast and ba— no, not that. She was eating… she was drinking hot cocoa. There. Hot cocoa. Breakfast? Hot cocoa.

The connection broke off.

"Splendid!" Dumbledore clapped. "You've got it! I knew your capacity for abstraction would serve you well."

"Why thank you!"

"You are, of course, nowhere near mastery," Dumbledore tempered. "Any good Legilimens would have caught glimpses of that bacon and buttered toast through the cracks of your hesitations. You must learn to _instantly_ focus on the lie, if you are to successfully trick your opponent. But you have the basics down. Let us try again."

"But Albus, I—"

" _Legilimens!_ "

Presence, breakfast, toas-no! A toast dumped in hot coca, yes, with bac— with sugar.

"Good, good," he said. "Still some… stuttering, so to speak, but we will get there in no time at all. Now—"

" _Albus_!" Hermione cut him off. She really had to tell him.

"…Yes?"

"Not that I do not want to learn Occlumency too, as a safety measure…" she began. "But it seems to me there is a much simpler way."

"And what might that be?" Dumbledore asked curiously.

"It… let's try it," she said with a little smug smile. "Cast away, Professor."

"Very well then," he obeyed, " _Legilimens!_ "

There came to foreign presence in the mind of Hermione Granger. The trick was focus, in a way. Focusing on one thing.

Keeping her eyes _shut_.

Dumbledore burst out laughing. It took him a solid three minutes to calm down completely, which he eventually achieved my drinking some lemon juice from a goblet that Hermione was sure hadn't been there just a few moments ago.

"Ah…" he explained, "yes, well, your perspective on things continues to be endlessly entertaining… heheheh… but alas, I do not think that will be enough. Firstly, shutting one's eyes so brutally would instantly show the Legilimens that you are up to him — whereas Occlumency allows for trickery."

"True," she agreed. "I hadn't considered that."

"And secondly," Dumbledore added, "though for obvious reasons I cannot demonstrate it myself, Barty Crouch Junior might make use of the Mind Control Curse to force you to open your eyes. The Imperius is cruder than Legilimency; it only allows to send orders, but not to read the mind one invades; but the tradeoff is that it can be cast without eye contact."

"Ah, I see," she said warily. "Hm. Let's carry on then."

"Oh, never mind that," Dumbledore waved away. "We must not rush into things. I shall have you practice some more tomorrow evening, if you don't mind?"

Hermione drew out her schedule from her robes' right pocket.

"Er," she objected, "I'm afraid I already have an _engagement_ tomorrow evening. We're having a sort of Marauder party with Remus, Harry, Ron, Maximilian and the Twins… And Hedwig of course… Well, I could always Time-Turn, of course, but —"

"No, no," Dumbledore desisted, "no need to alter the flows of Time for this old man's sake. Let us say Saturday, five p.m.?"

"Saturday's okay," she answered after checking her schedule. "…I think."

"Good," said Dumbledore. "…Well then, I believe we were discussing Divination?"

"Right, that!" she suddenly remembered. "Well, I told you the facts. Professor Trelawney is a _sham_. I'd argue it's even worse than Professor Lockhart, because _he_ was trying to teach something _real_ , whereas most of the books I've read suggest Divination — at least the sort that tries to predict the future — is just superstition."

"I wouldn't be quite so certain," Dumbledore argued. "Fate is fickle. To state a prediction might alter its veracity, no?"

"You mean…"

"I find it plausible," he explained, "that Sybill may have thought many predictions that did come true, but spoken aloud a few whose accomplishment was impeded by the targets' newfound knowledge of their content."

"Quantum Divination," Hermione summed up ironically, rolling her eyes. "It's true, except it's not anymore as soon as you start using it. (sigh) That sounds suspiciously like an excuse. And even if it's not, then learning it isn't of much use, is it?"

"What can I say, my dear?" he answered. "You chose to learn it. Nobody forced you."

"But I assumed —" she objected, "like any reasonable student would, that the course was actually useful. With Hogwarts' reputation, that didn't seem to be in _question_. But — ugh."

There was a long moment of silence. Dumbledore's skillful hands were still working on the cuckoo clock, but more to give himself a countenance; indeed, Hermione was pretty sure that for the past two minutes he'd just been taking random gears apart and screwing them back together, just to give himself something to do.

"Listen, Hermione," Dumbledore finally said, looking uncharacteristically worried, "I can hardly believe it, but you have uncovered _another_ important secret. Yes. Sybill Trelawney should not belong at Hogwarts. But…"

"What," Hermione asked snarkily, "she's secretly the daughter of Grindelwald? She holds the secret of the Fountain of Fair Fortune? What?"

"Not quite," he replied, "but not too far away from the truth, actually. No, Professor Trelawney is, in fact, a Seer."

There was another long pause.

"Er, yes, you would expect such from a Divination teacher," Hermione said. "In theory."

"No, I mean she is a true Seer," Dumbledore insisted; "not a mere Diviner, but one with the born gift of channeling Prophecy. And say what you will about the rest of Divination, Prophecy is no mere hoax."

Prophecies, huh.

Ahah.

Hm.

That was real, wasn't it.

Oh, she just knew where she was going.

"…There's secretly a Prophecy about Harry and the Turban, isn't it? She made the Prophecy? Only it's a secret? And you have to keep her close? Protected?"

Dumbledore gawked at her quite ungracefully. That was plenty enough of an answer.

" _Who wrote this reality!?_ " vented Hermione. "The closer I look at it, the more my life — no, _Harry's_ life, in which I am apparently a secondary character now — it seems to follow every literary convention in the book! The orphaned hero! With the distinctive scar! Sworn enemy of the Dark Lord! Raised by awful relatives, unaware of his past! _Gah_! And now a bloody _Prophecy_ , which the mysterious old wizard mentor knows about, because of _course_!…"

"Hermione, calm down!" Dumbledore pleaded. "I am aghast that you have guessed so rightly, but this is no reason to get in a _state_ —"

He pushed the refilled cup of lemonade towards her lips.

 _Oh well. If you can't beat them…_

She gurgled down the lemonade and then took a deep breath.

"Right, right," she said, doing her best to stay cool. "What does the Prophecy say, exactly?"

Dumbledore was about to say something and then silenced himself.

"You do swear you will devote your best talents to Occlumency, as soon as possible?" he asked severely.

"I do," she answered without a second thought.

"Then. The words of the Prophecy, spoken in 1981, are as follows:

 _The one with the power of vanquish the Dark Lord approaches,_

 _Born to those who have thrice defied him,_

 _Born as the seventh month dies…_

 _And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal,_

 _But he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…_

 _And either must die at the hand of the other,_

 _For neither can live while the other survives._

 _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born_

 _As the seventh month dies._ "

"Blah," Hermione remarked. "It doesn't even rhyme."

" _Miss Granger_!"

"Right, right, that was uncalled for," she admitted. "Hmm…"

Hermione slowly repeated the words of the Prophecy in her mind. Already she was considering potential loopholes in the Prophecy; it was simply second nature at this point.

"Are Prophecies binding?" Hermione asked. "It _is_ certain that this must come to pass?"

"Well, all evidence points towards it," Dumbledore answered, thoughtful. "History suggests that a Prophecy is the reverse of a prediction — where a prediction is only likely to come to pass as long as its targets do not hear of it, a Prophecy is but one of a thousand possible futures, _until_ those whom it refers to have learned of it. Then it is almost certain that the actions they will take shall lead to the Prophecy's fulfilling."

"And the Turban _has_ heard the Prophecy, I presume?"

"Obviously," answered Dumbledore. "Or, to be more precise, he has heard the first two thirds of it. But I do not believe that this will affect Fate. The Prophecy must come to pass, somehow, sooner or later. All we can do is hope."

"But is it the _wording_ , or the _spirit_ , that must be followed?" Hermione asked.

"I would say the wording, for our purposes," he answered after considering the question, "as the spirit of a Prophecy is usually only clear when it _has_ been fulfilled. Well, except for the fact that it is doubtless that Lord Voldemort is the Dark Lord, Harry Potter is the One, and his scar is the Mark."

"That's why he killed Harry's parents, isn't it?" Hermione asked, suddenly struck by the thought. "He learned the Prophecy, deduced it had to be about Harry and the Potters… oh God."

"You would guess correctly," Dumbledore confirmed, forlorn. "But as to your question considering the wording… I suppose you would seek out a loophole? I will not stop you, but though I may not have your knack for it, I have considered the Prophecy long and hard… and as best I can parse, we can only hope that Harry kills Voldemort someday, rather than the opposite. Though his Petrification certainly gives us some time to ponder."

"But… that can't be right," Hermione insisted. "We'd be killing him in cold blood… He's harmless now, as a statue, and someday, when the world is a better place, we'll figure out how to give him a body without his escaping, and, and we'll rehabilitate him… Someday…"

"Hermione," Dumbledore chastised, "I admire your idealism… but this death is necessary, I fear it is a responsibility we must face. And if ever a man deserved to die for his crimes, Lord Voldemort is that man."

"No man _did_ ," Hermione ruled, steadfast. "I'll find something. Some way. They'll both live, upon my word. There _has_ to be a loophole. There's _always_ a loophole."

The young girl and the old man looked at each other sadly, each envying the other's resolve. Finally the silence was broken:

"I believe I'll let you sleep on that, my young friend," said Dumbledore. "This clock may stubbornly get the date wrong, but I trust it enough to know it is late in the evening."

"Yes, on the subject of this clock," Hermione said, "where did you find it, exactly?"

"Ah, how funny that you should ask," Dumbledore answered, "it was sent to me yesterday by two anonymous admirers. Quite thoughtful of them."

Hermione grinned. "In red wrapping?"

"…Yes?"

"Albus, who do we know who act in a pair, are associated with the color red, and might want to send you a fake cuckoo clock on purpose?"

Dumbledore blinked twice and then began to chuckle.

"Good one! Good one! Ten points to Gryffindor! And do congratulate our dear Weasley friends on my behalf! Good night!"


	30. In the Forest

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _A bit of a more dramatic turn in the story! As usual, please review, etc. Oh, and I did not make up Alastair, as such. Look him up on the Wiki and you'll see he has a bit of an interesting behind-the-scenes story behind him…_

 **Chapter XXVIII: _In the Forest_**

Hagrid never _had_ brought Toft back to them. Instead, they had had to introduce themselves to a younger, female Wolf, one Fina. It was still quite an experience, but it just wasn't the same as meeting the Leader of the Forbidden Forest Pack, and Hermione still dreadfully envied Ron, and Neville, and that imbecile Goyle. And so, on Saturday afternoon of the next week, when Neville told her and her friends that he would soon be heading out into the Forest to visit Toft for the second time, she jumped on the occasion to have the entire group come with.

With Filch not a problem and Hagrid delighted to see them go, the rather large group of friends had no trouble heading out into the Forbidden Forest. Neville took the lead, since he now knew which way to go; he was followed by Harry, Maximilian, Hermione and Ron in that order, with Hedwig swooping overhead, on the lookout for any danger (the Forbidden Forest _was_ the Forbidden Forest, after all). The Basilisk would gladly have come, but Neville feared the Wolves might not take kindly to the presence of such a threatening creature on their territory.

The Wolves lived rather deep into the Forest, and the party had plenty of time to chat along the way. First they chatted as they always did — about classes, magic, pranks, day-to-day life — but then Hermione remembered she had something to tell them.

"Oh, I just remembered," she said. "Have any of you heard about Occlumency?"

"…Well, I have," Maximilian answered, but that's only because of… you know. Professor Max."

Hermione nodded quickly, trying to get it across to Maximilian that he shouldn't say anything else. She, Harry and Ron may know of his true nature, but Neville did not, for now, and this was no time to tell him.

"Right," she said, "anyone else?"

They all shook their heads, including Hedwig.

"It's the art of protecting one's mind against Legilimency," she explained didactically, "which is a form of magical mind-reading. I'd like all of you to learn it."

"And why would we need to learn that?" Ron asked, dismayed by the prospect of more work.

"Because — wait. Neville?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"Are you quite sure you know where we are going?"

"…I think so." said Neville uncertainly. "Why?"

"We've already been past that tree," she said, pointing at a massive black-barked oak on their right.

"Oh!" Neville smiled, regaining his confidence. "Yes, yes, of course. Er, we _have._ But, you know — magical forest. You can only get anywhere from this point if you circle the small firs three times and then come back to this oak and then turn left."

"The _Forest_ is like that too?" Hermione asked with a mixture of awe and revulsion. "God, between this and the Castle, magic has to be an architect's worst nightmare."

"You have no idea," Neville confirmed jokingly. "And wait till you see the Longbottom Manor. My bedroom is on the first floor, and the quickest way to get there is through a trapdoor in the cellar. …Right. Turn right, everyone, now."

"You were saying, Hermione?" Harry got them back on track.

"Ah, right," she said. "Well, I've been talking to Professor Dumbledore, and the long and short of it is, there are still Death Eaters out there who might want to look for the Turban."

"The Turban?" Neville asked, confused.

"She means Sir Tom," Maximilian said.

" _Who?_ "

"Riddle," Hermione explained impatiently. "You Know Who."

"No, I don't know bloody who!" Neville protested. "Stop making fun of me, alright?"

"Lord Voldemort!" Harry finally clarified, laughing.

Neville stopped dead in his tracks and cried:

"Don't — say — that — name! … _Please_!"

"Neville mate," Ron replied with a smirk, "at this point, you asked for it."

"The _point_ is," Hermione said as they resumed walking, "that we _do_ know where the Turban is, and a Death Eater might try to pick it from our mind. Thus, Professor Dumbledore wants us to try and learn Occlumency. Don't worry, it's rather easy, I find."

"Yeah, because we all know what _you_ find easy is a good indicator of difficulty," Ron muttered.

"What was that, Ronald?" Hermione asked bitingly.

"Nothing, nothing…" he apologized.

"So…" she asked to the entire group. "You _will_ learn it?"

There was a concert of "Yes"-es, and even an approving hoot from Hedwig. Hermione had no idea if it was even possible to use Legilimency on a Post Owl, or a snake, for that matter. And what about a Painting or a Gargoyle or a Ghost? Ah, she mustn't get sidetracked.

"Very well," she said, "then there's something else I can now tell you. It's about you, Harry."

"Er… okay?" Harry said apprehensively.

"To cut a long story short," she said, "there was a Prophecy made about you. …A _real_ Prophecy. It prophesies you would have the ability to defeat the Dark Lord, which is why he tried to kill you when he learned about it. Also, it's not quite fulfilled yet. There's some stuff towards the end that seems to say you're destined to either be killed by Riddle or kill him yourself."

" _…_ _What?_ " Harry practically yelled after a long pause.

Everyone had stopped walking as Hermione spoke, except Hermione herself, meaning she was now quite a bit ahead of the group.

"Shh!" Neville shushed, afraid. "Don't be too loud! You don't want to call attention to yourself around here. We're getting close to Acromantula territory."

This time, it was Ron's turn to shriek " _What?_ "

"Don't worry," Neville tried to reassure the scared Weasley, "Hagrid told me they mostly keep to themselves since, you know, last year. Still, they were never very reasonable. You never know."

The children and owl progressed in silence until Hermione spoke up, although she kept her voice low:

"Harry, you mustn't let it bother you too much," she said. "I've got the wording of the Prophecy, and I _think_ I can figure out a loophole. No one has to kill anyone. I think. I mean, I'm not quite sure _what_ I'm going to do yet, but there's _got_ to be a loophole. The phrasing is vague enough… I think I might have the beginning of an idea. I'll need to think some more, but — don't worry too much."

"Thanks, Hermione," Harry said, genuinely thankful. "…You're a great friend!"

"I try," Hermione said, smiling widely and blushing.

This heartwarming moment was cut short by a screech coming from above. Hedwig dove down and flew rapidly around Harry, shrieking and screeching in distress.

"She's warning us!" Harry interpreted, readying his wand. "About — something! Augh — why can't I learn to speak Owl?"

"What is it, Hedwig? What _is_ it?" Hermione pressed

"I think I know what it is," Maximilian said.

Ron had seen it too. Quivering, he pointed at a dark shape moving quickly through the undergrowth.

" _Look…_ "

{ _Quick_ ,} Maximilian asked Hermione in Parseltongue, so Neville wouldn't understand, { _should I transform?_ }

{ _Not yet,_ } Hermione hissed back.

"What do you want?" Neville asked the advancing Acromantula.

The spider walked forward slowly. It was around the size of a dog; the top of its shell seemed… _bent_. As it stepped into the light, a series of jagged lines on the carapace became visible, held together by silvery silk. Hermione wondered if the Acromantula had been injured during last year's battle, but the injury looked older than that, somehow… not that she was an expert on Acromantula biology.

Finally, it came to a halt about ten feet from them and said in a strained male voice:

"I do not mean harm…" said the Acromantula. Its pincers were trembling. "I heard a voice, a name, I knew long ago…"

Hermione didn't know what was going on anymore, and Ron had curled up in a ball, but Harry walked forward gingerly, eyes wide. Though to his credit he still had his wand held tightly in his right hand.

"…Alastair?" he breathed.

" _You remember_!" cheered the Acromantula, pincers clicking rapidly. "Harry, you remember!"

Harry answered with a small smile.

"Of course I remember, Alastair, how could I forget?" he said.

"Still so nice…" breathed the giant spider, more to himself than to Harry.

"…You've grown," Harry remarked.

"It has been many years," answered Alastair.

"But I thought you were dead!"

"You can't easily kill an Acromantula," he replied. "But as you can see, I didn't get out of it… whole."

"I'm sorry," Hermione interrupted, "but could someone please explain? I and Neville are very confused, and I think Ron is wondering what terrible things Fred and George must have put in his drink this morning."

"Oh…" Harry turned back to his friends. "Everyone, this is Alastair — probably my oldest friend. I met him in my cupboard when he was still very tiny. I just thought he was a regular spider, just one that could talk. Seeing how I could also talk to that python at the zoo, I didn't think anything of it."

"Harry!" Ron whimpered. "Why… why d-didn't you _say_ anything?"

"I just knew Alastair for a few weeks, when I was nine or so," Harry explained. "He just showed up one day in my cupboard, and we talked about things, and shared some food. Then one day…" Harry swallowed. "One day he tried to scuttle into the living room, and, and Uncle Vernon saw him and —"

"And he stomped on me," Alastair finished grimly.

"Oh Merlin!" said Neville, paling.

"That's horrible!" Hermione concurred. "I… I'm so sorry, Mr Alastair!"

"Just Alastair, just Alastair," the spider corrected them. "I know we spiders sound deep and old, but I'm no older than you, you know… I'm young. I'm little, haven't you noticed? It's not just the injuries."

" _Little?_ " Ron repeated in disbelief.

"Oh, calm down, Ron, please," Hermione said, half a plea, half an order. "You can plainly see Alastair doesn't mean any harm."

"Alastair," Harry continued questioning his eight-legged friend, "just, how did you even survive?"

"After he crushed me," he answered, "your evil Uncle threw me out the window. I was seen by Hagrid. Hagrid healed me and brought me home."

"Hagrid had brought you?!" said Harry.

"Yes…" Alastair explained. "I don't know everything, but Hagrid and other wizards patrolled around your home sometimes, to make sure that you were safe. They had been asked by Professor Dumbledore. Hagrid would tell us stories — he always tells stories when he visits us. I wanted to go with hime one day, to meet you, and because I'd been a good boy he said yes."

"Oh, Alastair…"

Harry awkwardly tried to hug his arachnid friend, whose pincers clicked with joy.

* * *

The group pressed on, now followed by Alastair. Surprisingly, the Acromantula agreed that they should stay quiet until they were out of Acromantula lands. It seemed he had little faith in his siblings — who in turn had little faith in him. Soon, they reached a safer of the forest. Hermione saw Harry working up the courage to ask the question that was also burning her lips.

"Alastair… You haven't… you didn't attack any children, did you? Last year…?"

The dog-sized spider's pincers quivered.

"No,… he answered, "not children — not human children — Harry, I would not — and even if I did I couldn't. They did not even ask me to come, my brothers and sisters. They say that I am a weak cripple — a _hindrance,_ Mother said."

"What do you mean, not children?" Hermione asked, frightened.

"I did not hurt the people at Hogwarts," Alastair insisted, "but — well — we have always been at war with the Centaurs. I… never killed — but I had to fight, Harry, I had to, Mother would have eaten me —"

"It's okay," Harry told his old friend. "It's okay. It's not your fault. She's gone now."

As Harry once again hugged Alastair (a sight at which Ron turned away, though he kept himself mostly under control), it occurred to Hermione that she didn't know quite _what_ Dumbledore had done with Queen Mosag. The obvious thing would have been to put her in the Third Floor Corridor like everything else, but she knew for a fact that he hadn't.

Just one more thing to research, along with unsupported flight, and how to loophole the Prophecy, and where might Voldemort's other Horcruxes be, and where did magic come from, and could Basilisk Venom dissolve diamond, and many other little things like that.

* * *

Turning left, and then right — hopping one-legged through that clearing and running eyes shut tight through the next — Neville led them through the forest. The blond boy's confidence seemed to be growing by the minute as he succeeded in navigating the dangerous woods on just his second trip. _Hermione_ wasn't frightened — she knew that, if worst came to worst, Maximilian's powers and her Time-Turner were plenty enough to ensure their safety; but _Neville_ was still being very brave. Harry's courage and quick reflexes were also tested by an encounter with a malicious Redcap that ended with the murderous elf declubbed by Harry's mean Disarming Charm — one of the most useful spells Professor Lupin had taught them — and subsequently petrified by Hermione's Body-Bind Curse.

Neville was brave, but not foolhardy, and their way was made even longer and more sinuous than expected by his refusal to go anywhere near the Alizor and Centaur territories. Instead, he suggested they go through clearings favored by Unicorns.

To their disappointment, they only came across one Unicorn — yet what a sight even this single Unicorn made! Whiter than the small amounts of snow at its feat, with shining golden hooves and eyes kinder than a mother's.

They didn't get a good look at him or her, either, for the creature, who had looked in a rather friendly manner upon Neville, Hedwig, Hermione, darted away at lightning speed when Harry and Alastair (and then Maximilian and Ron) came into view. Perhaps it was that this made the boys outnumber the girls; Hermione recalled reading that Unicorns favored women over men if they must deal with humans; or perhaps the presence of an Acromantula and Boggart had just frightened it.

Really, who knew? They had places to be.

They had been trekking for a solid hour when they finally found themselves in front of a stone barrier about five feet in height.

"That's the border of the Wolf Den," Neville stated. "…Er, Miss Hedwig, would you give a hoot? Let Toft know we're here?"

Hedwig, all flustered at being called a 'Miss', enthusiastically complied.

A minute later, some of the boulders flew up in the air, opening a gate into the Wolf Den. On the other side was Toft, just as regal as the first time Hermione had seen him. At long last, she was going to introduce herself to—

Toft looked up and Hedwig came down, landed in front of the Alpha Wolf, bowed and chirped. Toft gave a small nod in reply.

" _Seriously?_ "

* * *

It was a strange experience, being the hosts of such different creatures from men, ones whom she could not at all communicate with. It was infuriating, really, that Hedwig seemed to be the favored guest among them, but it made sense — hoots and howls were not so different that, after some trial and error, the two thinking animals weren't able to learn the basics of each other's speech.

After Hedwig came Alastair; the Wolves were wary of the Acromantulas and vice-versa — how could they not be, when they were rivals for the same preys in the Forest — but their common grounds certainly meant they understood each other. And moreover, Alastair seemed to know a few words of Wolf. Not much; he clearly did not have her and Ron's gift for languages. But what little he knew he could pronounce easily, since however in the world Acromantulas could speak in the first place, it certainly wasn't bound by the restrictions of a human throat.

Oh, someone should just invent Strigidtongue, it couldn't be so hard, you'd just have to get the knowledge of their language out of the Owls to start with, somehow —

Somehow —

Oh.

"Maximilian, do you think you could accept for Neville to… know?" she asked.

The Boggart, meanwhile, was petting a young Wolf cub and murmuring inhuman sounds into its furry little ear.

"—what?" he said, looking up. "Oh… Well… If you trust him, I could do this for you, but — why?"

"I'd like you to be an interpreter for us," she explained. "I see you've already picked out Wolf language from them, and I'm sure you could easily take the shape of a wolf yourself. I hope you realize it's infuriating, to see you, and Alastair, and Hedwig, and even Hedwig — while Ron, Harry and I are left staring blankly at the Wolves who stare back, with utter disinterest?"

"I believe I see what you mean," Maximilian admitted. "Very well."

And he turned into a wolf.

This caused a certain commotion; on one side, Wolf mothers whistled hurriedly at their pups to send them back into the den, or grabbed them in their maws if necessary; while on the other the humans looked utterly flabbergasted — Neville and Alastair at Maximilian's display itself, and the rest of them at Maximilian's utter lack of tact in transforming without a word of warning to said poor Neville.

" _What's going on?_ " Neville whimpered.

Maximilian the Wolf barked a few words at the true Wolves, which calmed them down quickly, and then he morphed his head back into his human one — producing a body not unlike a Sphinx. He explained:

"So, er," he began, "Neville, I… have no idea how to go about this, but I'm actually a Boggart."

"You… _what now_?"

"I'm your Boggart from last year, the one who turned into Professor Max," Maximilian reminisced. "I… guess I liked behind human so much, I stayed that way. But I can still read minds and transform whenever I want to."

"I… I… _what!?_ "

"I wanted to be a Hogwarts student," the Boggart continued, "Dumbledore and the Sorting Hat thought it was funny, and Hermione Granger thought she was interesting. They helped me get started, learn how to be human… and, uh, I guess I did a good job, since you didn't suspect a—"

" _How could you!?_ " Neville practically shouted, his face red with anger. "You, and Harry and Ron and — _you're supposed to be my friends!_ How long have you been keeping that secret? _Why?_ "

"Neville," Harry tried to explain, "we weren't such close friends yet when this all started, we didn't think—"

"What, you just _forgot_ to tell me later?" Neville carried on shouting. "You didn't think it was _important_? You didn't think I would _care_? I'm just a background character, is that it, I'm just the meek reliable boy you want to ask if you need something, I'm _part of the scenery_ , is that it?"

" _Neville, calm down!_ " Hermione begged.

"Your Marauder meetings, I'm kept out of, you keep sneaking of Merlin knows where with Ron and Harry, but me? We only talk at dinner or in the common room, and only when _I_ say hello to _you_ — _I'm a person_ , Merlin's pants!" Neville screamed, and there were tears in his eyes. "Hermione, you — you're all set to proclaim your left shoe is a person at the drop of a hat, but if it's a dumb, boring human _boy_ — and Maximilian, we were _friends_ , and-and-you the whole time you were a — _a_ —"

Crackles of magic rippled through the air; twigs snapped one by one around Neville's feet, startling the Wolves who were watching the human boy with much confusion; pebbles and then stones started to twirl around him —

Toft yipped at the other Wolves like a general speaking commands, and four or five gray canines immediately surrounded Neville, teeth bared and eyes intent. Five seconds passed as the stones flew and Neville panted and the Wolves glared; then suddenly the boy slumped down, fast asleep, and the stones came to a rest along with him.

Toft then turned towards Hermione, Ron and Harry, who were holding each others' hands tightly. He said a few words in the Wolf tongue, which Maximilian (back to his innocuous human form) translated:

"They put him to sleep, it's nothing, it's softer than even the wizards' Sleeping Potions. He will wake up only in exactly three hours, and hopefully he'll be calmer."

The children nodded in agreement, along with Alastair and Hedwig.

Toft looked meaningfully at the gate that he'd reopened in the stone barrier. He talked some more, which Maximilian immediately rendered:

"Toft says that it would be better for us to go now, and for the humans to sort out their business within their own species; he wants no wizards quarreling on his grounds. It's too dangerous."

"He is right —" Alastair voiced his agreement, "one of these rocks nearly hit me — well, I have a shell, but Wolf pups don't."

* * *

The tried friends said their goodbyes and took their leave of the Wolves after their rather short visit. Alastair parted ways with them a few paces away from the Wolf territory; he had placed a web nearby and wanted to check whether he'd caught anything. Hermione had the worrying impression that whatever he'd managed to catch would be the only thing Alastair could eat that night, but now wasn't the time to mention it. Now that he had no secret to keep, thankfully, Maximilian was able to transform into a small horse on whose back the sleeping Neville was placed (along with Hedwig, who was, in all honesty, quite tired, and soon nuzzled next to Neville as well). And they marched forwards.

* * *

Only half an hour later, as the sun began to go down, did the group fully realize, with sinking hearts, that only Neville had the slightest clue how to get back to Hogwarts.


	31. The King Beneath

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _We're not out of the woods yet! (Oh, me and my puns…) In other news, I believe this takes us over the 100k mark, so hooray! How about celebrating this with some reviews? Hm? Pwease?_

 **Chapter XXIX: _The King Beneath_**

It was night now. The group had stopped in a clearing, correctly surmising that they'd only get lost deeper if they kept moving. Maximilian gently put the sleeping Neville and Hedwig down on a bed of moss and then turned back into his human form.

"Hermione," he suggested, "do you think I should turn into a bird, fly to the Castle? Send help?"

"No, it's no use…" Hermione answered after a moment's thought. "Assuming you didn't get eaten by a Thestral, or shot by a Centaur, you couldn't find us again from the outside… Any rescue party would blunder in blind."

"Maybe we could try finding the Wolves again," Ron suggested.

"Or the Acromantulas," Harry added.

"Er… I'd rather not them," Ron said politely, "but the Centaurs, maybe?"

"And how would we find our way _there_ , either?" Hermione vented. "Do you have the _faintest idea_ where we are and how to get to those places?"

The three boys had to admit that they didn't.

"Urgh!" she groaned. "You boys are the worst about Gryffindor. Rash and thoughtless. We shouldn't have left the Wolf Den so quickly, we'd have realized… And Neville, did he need to get into such a fit?… And _you_ , Maximilian. You _seriously_ need to learn about tact. Politeness. { _POLITE._ } _Les bonnes manières_."

"Alright, alright!" Harry tried to calm her down, taking her arm. "Look, it's also kind of my fault. I should have thought to bring brooms for all of us. But none of us could really have predicted that."

"Yeah…" Ron added. "The best thing we can do is stay here for now and wait for Neville to wake up."

"But that won't be — we'd have to sleep here!" Hermione realized.

"I guess so," Maximilian nodded. "Why?"

" _McGonagall will kill us!_ " Ron whimpered as he caught Hermione's train of thought.

"Seriously!?" Harry said abrasively. "We're stuck at night in the bloody Forbidden Forest, and you're worried about detention?"

"Let's just try to sleep, alright!" Hermione ordered, and to give them the lead she herself transfigured a nearby rock into a pillow and laid down on it.

(Rocks to pillow was one of those spells she never expected to use in daily life, but actually, she now found, it _could_ have its practical uses in certain circumstances. Uh. Who knew?)

Hermione had spoken those words so commandingly — a trick she'd practiced with Minerva — that the boys immediately began to make themselves comfortable. In Maximilian's case, this took the form of him turning part of himself into a bed so the rest of him could sleep in it. But soon, Harry sat up:

"Wait," he said, "we can't all just sleep together. What if some monster came by?"

"{ _Sweet Scales_ }!" Ron breathed. "You're right!"

"Let's make shifts," Harry suggested. "I can start, and then—"

"Oh, not again," Hermione scolded gently. "You don't have to go first at everything, you know. No one's asking for a heroic sacrifice here. _You_ are a flesh-and-blood boy who needs rest. Considering that _he_ doesn't, he could beat some of the monsters here _without_ a wand, and it's partially his fault we're here in the first place, I think _Maximilian_ should do it."

"Er, okay," Harry said, prodding at Maximilian's bed. "Max? You awake?"

But Maximilian lay still.

"Damn it," Hermione muttered, "I thought he was just pretending. It's no use, Harry, it looks like he wanted to be thorough this time. He actually shut off his brain right now. Knowing how his powers work, he won't be back until morning."

"Right," Harry said, "I'll do it then."

Harry tried to hide it, but he seemed _relieved_ that the tiresome and dangerous task fell back to him. Hermione didn't think that seemed very healthy, but she was too tired to argue. On a whim, she gathered some twigs and _Incendiused_ them, telling Harry to watch the fire, and then she went back to her pillow.

* * *

Hermione woke up falling.

Feeling like one was falling as one was jolted from sleep was not a unique phenomenon, as a childhood spent with doctors had taught her; it was a known phenomenon, called hypnagogic jerk, or, if you were German, the _Einschlafzuckungen_. It was still all theoretical, but some scientists proposed it had to do with a misfire in the nervous system. Nothing to worry about.

This, however, was not that.

Not only did she feel very clearly like she was falling, but what she could see, and the startled screams of her friends around her, confirmed this opinion.

She came to a hard landing on a ground of packed dirt. Harry, Ron, Maximilian, Neville, even Hedwig, all fell around her, as twigs, debris and leaves also fell down from above in their wake. Still dazed, she felt at her pockets, but her wand was not there. She pawed around her in the dirt, and thought she saw it, half-buried in the soil; but suddenly a brown, clawed hand burst from the ground and closed around it. The owner of the hand soon finished emerging, revealing long spindly legs, a helmeted head, and a grotesque spherical body covered in dirt and grime.

An Alizor.

" _Ognok, ognok, ognok!_ " cackled the creature, showing yellow, rotten, but also surprisingly sharp teeth.

From context, Hermione gathered this meant:

"Well, well, well!"

Dusting off her robes, Hermione tried to climb to her feet and said to the creature:

"Er, we're quite sorry if we're intruding. My name is Hermione Granger. Would you mind giving me back my wand?"

" _Grak!_ " the Alizor barked, and Hermione had a strong inkling this meant "Shut up."

Digging out of the walls, other Alizors of various shapes and sizes soon joined the first. They jumped at the wizards and took their wands away before they could even react, growling and barking, before tying their wrists in front of them with ropes.

Thinking fast as the rough humanoids pulled their prisoners to their feet and began to lead them through a gallery, Hermione got close to Maximilian and hissed:

{ _Don't transform for now! Let them believe we're defenseless! We need to find out what's happening and what they want._ }

{ _Alright_ ,} Maximilian replied.

Harry and Ron had also heard this exchange and kept quiet as well, though Harry seemed somewhat worried at the careless way an Alizor was carrying the still-injured Hedwig — he held her dangling from her left feet, despite her best attempts to get away. As for Neville, a particularly large Alizor had just put him over his shoulder like a rug-sack — fortunately, Neville, still under Toft's Sleep Spell it seemed, felt nothing of this.

Dragged and pushed and poked with pikes, the mages and owl were taken to a large fire-lit cave, the heart of the Alizor colony. There were dozens of the dirty goblin-like creatures there, staring in curiosity at the captured humans; there were rough wooden tables, a crude mockery of Hogwarts' Great Hall, littered with uncut lumps of meat. Metal pikes, axes and halberds were resting against the walls of stone and packed dirt. And in the centre of the room, on a large throne of wrought iron, sat the King himself. Where most of his soldiers were about the same size as the teenagers, the King towered above them; his spherical body alone was as tall as Neville, and just as wide.

Their captors let go of them and gave their monarch a salute before standing at attention. An Alizor with a golden, plumed helmet, the one who'd been holding Hedwig so carelessly, walked forward and talked to the King in the rough Alizor tongue.

" _Gorm Krawnig, og bogos roglestrom, Hogworldsweezargg hedlbnog!_ "

The King answered shortly but approvingly and then motioned for his men to move the prisoners closer to him, which the children did without fuss. The titan eyed and sniffed them curiously and hummed.

"Your Majesty," Hermione took the initiative of saying, curtsying as much as her bonds would allow, "My name is Hermione Granger. We were lost in the Forest; we mean you no harm."

The King considered her, huffed and then looked at Maximilian.

" _Sir_!" Hermione insisted. "…Do you speak English?!"

Turning back to her, the large monster laughed — his was a gurgling, roaring, not very reassuring sort of laugh, a bit like what she imagined a pirate or viking's laugh would sound like.

" _Blah-arh-arh_! _Grah_!… Yes, lettle _weezarg_ gorl. Speak English. Wat want?"

"Sir," Hermione continued, trying to keep cool, "I'm sure you're aware that we are wizards, and children, and other wizards will not take it kindly if we disappear. Please release us at the earliest possible convenience."

" _Galstrom_!" the Alizor King chuckled, still smiling with all his sharp teeth. "Are _lost_ in _Forbdenforst_ , yes? Heh! _Weezargen_ , not know, yes, where are? _Harh_! Disappear, who know. Maybe eaten _Acrmantoolas_ , yes? Heheh, maybe Centaurs do it, heh? We _safe_. They not know. They not _can_ know."

That barbarian bossman of a King was seriously getting on Hermione's nerves. He thought he was so clever with his second-grader wit and his horribly mangled English.

"What do you _want_ with us?" she asked impatiently.

"Yeah!" Ron added before she could shush him. "We're just kids, we've got nothing you want!"

" _Galgrobweezargs_!" spat the King. "Vgot plenty. Got _Wands_ first. _Grogl! Wandknapp!_ "

The Alizor with the gold helmet — Grogl — held forward their wands, which the King took with great care, like a Troll handling fine china.

"Wands… precious, yes?" the King continued. " _Weezargs_ forbid, but _important_. Useful. Hunt, war, yes?"

"Alright, you've got our wands, good for you," Hermione argued. "Now let us go!"

" _Not fast so_ , _weezarggorl_!" the King growled. "Have wand, is goot. Bot not know _how_ , yes. Not can go _Hogworldds_ , hm? Hrr. Bot _know_. _You_ know. You… teach."

"You want to learn magic?" Hermione repeated incredulously. "Look, if you knew me you'd know I'm not the greatest supporter of the Wand Ban either, but you kidnapped us and hurt us and jeered at us. Why would we help you _now_?"

" _For free become and go,_ " the Alizor said threateningly. "Are prisoners me; and are goot _Fletch_ also, hm? Har! _Algezaurs_ hungry, hm, understand?"

The human children understood understood perfectly and all blanched at the same time, only now fully noticing the looks the other Alizors were giving them.

There was but one answer to give.

Especially since, if the Alizors were stupid enough, this would give them an opportunity to get back their wands.

"We'll do it," she said.

" _Goot!_ "

" _But_ ," she added, "you mustn't hurt _any_ of us."

The King stared at the wands in his claw, weighing his options.

"Including Hedwig."

The Alizor gave her a blank stare.

"Hedwig's the owl."

" _Oh!_ " he said. " _Grhm_ … goot. Have word me. Will not hurt. _If teach goot_."

Then, without a word of goodbye, the large creature stopped paying the humans any attention. He turned his attention to the carcass of a boar lying on one of the tables and greedily began to eat from it in quite a disgusting spectacle. A few minutes later, seeing them out the corner of his eyes and realizing they were still there, the King ordered them taken away in Alizor-speech.

* * *

The prisoners, hands mercifully untied, were soon locked up in a "cell" — a much smaller cave whose walls were stone rather than earth, with a large boulder blocking the entrance. It seemed they were to stay here until the Alizors were ready to begin learning magic; it was anyone's guess when _that_ would be. In the morning, most likely — Hermione's watch showed that they'd barely slept for four hours when the Alizors below had sprung their trap.

The silver lining was that this put them clear of Toft's Sleeping Spell, and indeed Neville soon began to wake up.

"…Where are we?"

"Wandless prisoners of a Morlock King," Hermione answered bitterly. "Also, royal advisors in magic affairs, and potential pot-roast if we don't tread carefully."

Neville gave her a blank stare to rival that of an elephant who'd find himself in the middle of a snowstorm.

"Aren't you just glad you asked?" Harry added.

* * *

Instead of sleeping, the wizards spent the rest of the night trying to figure out a plan (and trying to rein in Ron and Neville's understandable, but inconvenient, fear). It wasn't only a matter of escaping safely; they had to avoid angering their captors in the meantime, and yet not _really_ teach them any of the dangerous spells they'd no doubt be asking for. When, at what must have been 8 a.m., the gold-plumed Alizor returned and led Hermione away from the cell, she knew perfectly what she needed to do.

She was brought into the throne room, which was nearly empty now save for the King himself and one guard. The King was holding Neville's wand, the long aspen wand with a dragon heartstring core that he'd inherited from his father — it seemed the Alizor had picked it because, as the longest, it was the best fit for the oversized monster.

" _Ah… gorl_ ," he said. "Begin teaching now."

"I can hardly teach without having a wand myself," Hermione argued.

" _No trick_ ," threatened the King. "Am not stupid. Will give _twig_. Show. Not do."

So saying, he gave her a twig that was about the same size and shape as Neville's wand; but it was no wand, it wasn't polished, nor quite straight, and Hermione felt nothing special from holding it.

"Teach now, _weezarg_ ," ordered the King, impatient. "Teach magic."

"But… what magic?" Hermione continued to stall. "I know many spells, majesty, I don't know where to begin."

"I not know!" roared the King, rising from his throne. "Not know magic, I! _Galrob!_ Choose, _tragdobl_! Choose spell to learn! _Teach_!"

"Very well, then," she said obediently. "I suggest we begin with the Wand-Lighting Charm. It allows the wizard to create a source of light from the tip of their wand."

"Ah!" the Alizor said appreciatively, settling back in his chair. " _Goot_ … useful. Better to flaming, hm. Yes. Teach Wand-Lighting Charm, yes."

"Now look," she said didactically, "you must move your wand in a twirl pattern, like a loop. Like this."

She demonstrated, with the correct movement or rhythm. For now, there was no harm in the Alizor learning that spell.

The King mimicked her movement, and while without incantation or intent no light was created, the mere act of waving the wand so produced a veritable rainbow of brown and red sparks. This was confirmation enough that Alizors _were_ magical, at least, like Goblins — Hermione didn't know what she'd have done if it had turned out they were _unable_ to use wands, like Hags. She doubted the King would have taken it well.

"Good, yes, that's about it," she congratulated. "Now, you have to focus on _wanting_ the effect. Visualize a ball of light at the tip of the wand."

"Am seeing light," the King told her.

"Very good," she instructed, "now repeat the wand movement and say loud and clear: _Lumos_!"

Her ogre of a student did as she had said, not mangling the pronunciation of "Lumos" too badly, and indeed a faint yellow light was emitted from the end of Neville's wand. As soon as it dwindled out, he repeated the same movement, and again the light appeared — dim and flickering, but there nonetheless.

"Very good!" she clapped her hands in an exaggerated congratulation. "If you practice, you'll have that charm down in no time at all."

The word of practice seemed to stump the King.

"…Do something over and over until you know how to do it well?" she elaborated.

"Ah! See!" nodded the King. "Hrg… Arh, no. _Gummt._ Boring. Not now; want more now to learn, yes. Teach."

Time for the second phase of her plan.

"Would you perhaps like to learn the Killing Curse?"

The monster-king's eyes lit up.

" _Yes!_ Most, very useful. _Tegorble…_ Teach."

"Yes sir," she said with a neutral air. "The wand pattern is this."

And, her face the very picture of concentration, she performed a long and elaborate series of flourishes.

"Are you following?"

The King looked at her dumbly.

" _Urrr…_ " he said slowly. "Maybe, show again, yes?"

She'd practiced those flourishes in their cell, using a shapeshifted Maximilian as wand, in order to be ready to repeat them flawlessly if the King asked. Tricking the man-eating tribal leader would take some care; he was ignorant, but not _stupid_.

She continued her lesson.

"The incantation is — and please, mind the rhythm, it's important: _AVO-cah-dow Kay-DA-vera-tooow."_

The King blinked.

"Of course, the intent is to focus on the image of skulls and bones, you understand. Now let's see it."

The Alizor raised his wand uncertainly.

" _Ah… vo…"_

Acting as frightened and shocked as possible, Hermione shrieked:

" _Not at me!_ "

The King stopped and chuckled:

" _Heheh_ … Right, would stupid. Hrr. Uh…"

He pointed Neville's wand at a live chicken, slowly bleeding from the wound where a hungry Alizor had bitten into it, which was lying helplessly on one of the tables.

" _Ah-vo-CAh-dow…_ "

His flourishes were more like wild swings of a club.

"…rr. Maybe… Maube… show again…?…"

* * *

An hour later:

" _CHICKEN STILL NOT DEAD!_ What happening _now_?!"

"I assure you I have no idea," Hermione said innocently. "Although… now that I think about it… your second-to-last twirl could have used a little more nerve behind it… and it's _toooow_ , not _tooow_ , you see?"

* * *

Three more hours.

"…Aha! _Bird dead now_! I succeed!"

"So it would appear, but I think it has more to do with the blood loss, to be honest."

"Uh? _Krabple!_ You right! _Bring other bird!_ Practice _more_!"

* * *

Two more hours.

"Bird… bird still not dead, _krapble_!… Hand hurts. Hrrrr. _Tired_. Is _hard_!…"

"Oh, I'm sorry, would you like to try another spell? A simpler one?"

" _Yes!_ "

"How about a spell to conjure bunny-rabbits?"

* * *

Three hours.

"YES! Can make rabbit! Useful, _goot_!"

The King bit into the unfortunate Conjured white rabbit!, and it vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Hermione said, putting her hands over her mouth, "I forgot you didn't know… You can't conjure edible food. It's one of the fundamental laws of Transfiguration."

" _ArrrrrrRRRRrrrgh!_ "

* * *

"…and now, the spell to Transfigure a teacup into a spoon…"

" _No!_ No! _Enough_ … All not-useful! You bad teacher! Eat tomorrow!"

"Oh, are you _sure_? Once we're done with the spoons, I _was_ planning to show you the Explosion-Making Curse…"

" _Wat?_ Ah… uh… erh… _goot_ , not eat. Bot… uhm… tomorrow. Go now. Teach tomorrow. Must sleep. …Wrist hurts."


	32. Out of the Woods

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _Not my favorite chapter — feels a bit disjointed — but one does have to move the plot forward one way or another. I hope you all still enjoy this story! Do review and tell me what you think. Really, I always appreciate it. Good or bad. Though obviously I'm holding out my breath for good._

 **Chapter XXX: _Out of the Woods_**

Hermione Granger was rather happy with herself as she walked back to her cell. Without losing the King's trust, she had succeeded in avoiding any spells the Alizors might use for evil, while still teaching him some genuinely useful basics. And what was more, she had made time. Time during which Maximilian Candy, as agreed, had quickly escaped the cell, taken the form of an inconspicuous Alizor, and spent the rest of the day looking for their wands. After being forced to knock out a few snoopy Alizors, he had finally dug them up (literally) and brought them back to the cell unnoticed — all, of course, except for Neville's, which hadn't left the Alizor King's side.

"Well done, Maximilian!" Hermione congratulated him as soon as the guard who'd brought her back to the cell had left.

"Thank you—"

"Alright," Harry cut him off, pressing, "we've got them, let's go now."

"Fine…" she granted. "Everyone, around Maximilian!"

Harry, Ron, Neville and herself formed a defensive line around Maximilian, who hovered to the ceiling of the chamber, again turned his arms into Alizor claws, and began to dig their way up through the packed dirt and rocks. Ten minutes in, an Alizor guard burst in the cell, alarmed by the noise of falling debris, but he was quickly Petrified by Hermione and Stunned by Harry at the same time.

Ten more minutes of incredibly fast and steady digging later, the Boggart pierced the wooden 'roof' of the Alizor home — the one Hermione's fire had burnt through, indicating their presence to the creatures below — and the thin covering of soil above it. Having gotten a grip of the surface, the shapeshifter turned his legs into a rough ladder; his friends (with Harry cradling Hedwig in his left arm) soon emerged in the surface world as well.

As soon as they were all up, Harry rallied:

"Run!"

"Wait!" Neville halted, looking back at the hole in the ground. "What about my wand?"

"You can buy another!" Maximilian insisted. "Here, take mine for now. We must _go!_ "

Panting, hearts beating wildly, they ran through the thick undergrowth for what felt like an eternity. They didn't care where they were going; the important thing was to _get away_. And so they ran, crushing flowers and mushrooms underfoot, _kicking_ Redcaps out of their path — until they finally reached a friendly-looking spot in what seemed to be a very different, greener, less earthy part of the Forest. There was a gentle little stream bubbling by, from which a deer had been drinking when they blundered in, which they took as a sign that there hopefully wasn't anything too nasty lurking by.

They all took some time to rest and drink, then sat down in a circle and pondered.

Harry spoke up first:

"So… where do we go from here?"

"I would say we try to locate some native. Probably the Wolves or Centaurs," Maximilian suggested. "At best Professor Hagrid. At worst, the Acromantulas."

"Yes, or we could–"

This sentence was abruptly cut off as Hermione's eyes widened and she fell backwards off the rock she was sitting on.

She got up smacking her head with her wand.

"—Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

Ron snatched said wand from her hand and held her in place.

"What's happening to you?!"

"I — _gah_ — I made a mistake!" she muttered through clenched teeth, tears pearling. "None of this need have happened — I was such an _imbecile_! We could have been out of here yesterday, oh God, how could I have been so _blind_ –"

"Hermione," Ron again cut her off, "maybe a little less self-loathing and a little more explaining?"

"Right, right, sorry," she calmed herself, taking back her wand. "I… snakes."

"Eh?"

"There…" Hermione hesitated; explaining it seemed physically painful to her. "I should have thought of it. There are _snakes_ in the Forest. I presume. Snakes, who… _presumably_ … know their way around."

"Yes?"

"…We could. Can. Should have. _Called them_. And asked for direction."

While she continued overheating at her own stupidity, her friends gave each other stares of disbelief.

"Er…" Neville said, "you shouldn't be too hard on yourself there. Merlin knows _I'd_ never have thought of that."

" _You_ wouldn't, of course _you_ wouldn't," Hermione said bitterly.

"Hey!" Neville took offense. "Did you actually listen to what I said yesterday? I'm not saying I didn't lose my temper, a lot, but —"

"No, it's not that," she defended herself, "it's — this is supposed to be _my thing_. Finding loopholes to impossible situations. Especially ones involving Parseltongue!… I feel like such a _cretin_."

"Oh, stop it already!" Ron scolded. "You're smarter than the rest of Hogwarts put together already — Albus bleedin' Dumbledore asks you for advice — and you think we'll _allow_ you to call yourself _dumb_? Hermione, somehow it seems you need to be told this: you're awesome. And we love you."

And so saying, the tall boy, still holding Hermione's forearm, leaned forward and kissed her.

Merely on the cheek — it could have been nothing but a friendly gesture, though that was not what she saw in Ron's eyes.

But whatever the intent behind these words and that kiss may have been, the effect they had on Hermione was undeniable. Her pale complexion turned bright pink, she held her breath, at a loss for words; and most importantly, she completely lost he train of thought about how she was the dumbest student to ever sit on the benches of Hogwarts. That train had been a rickety brain-clog of misplaced humility from the start, and it is gladly that her subconscious saw it off to the dark recesses of the human soul where such bad trains of thoughts go spend a lonely eternity.

Her mind now clear, and with a pressing incentive to change the subject, Hermione got back to business:

"Very well. Harry, Maximilian, Ron? Let's all call together, please."

A chorus of beckoning hisses soon resounded through the forest and led to the appearance of a three-foot-long adder who emerged from the gnarled exposed roots of the oak trees to their right.

{ _Who calls?_ }

{ _It is us, sir,_ } Hermione said politely. { _We are human Speakers, as you see; and quite lost in your woods. Would you kindly show us the way to the Castle Hogwarts?_ }

The snake eyed them suspiciously.

{ _We of the Forest do not trust humans, Speaker,_ } he answered, { _nor are we inclined to wanton kindness. What have you to offer this one?_ }

{ _We have little with us right now,_ } Hermione admitted. { _Although we could show you some magic, if it would interest you._ }

{ _Magic is not rare in a magical forest, Speaker,_ } the snake jeered. { _The human magic with sticks and noises is merely a curiosity to this one. It is also dangerous and strange. Give this one something more substantial, and this one may help you._ }

{ _Once we arrive at the Castle, I might bring you some food,_ } she said. { _If you'd allow, I could also enchant your nest, to make it safer, or concealed, or warmer._ }

The snake grew aggressive.

{ _You will not bewitch this one's nest! This one will not allow it!_ }

{ _Merely suggesting,_ } Hermione retracted.

{ _Let it stay that way, Speaker,_ } the adder threatened. { _…However, food does sound attractive._ }

* * *

The sun had well and truly set on Sunday evening when loud knocks brought Professor Rubeus Hagrid to the door of his large hut.

"Who's it?"

Using one of the magical Keys to which he was Keeper, he soon opened said wooden door, to find Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Maximilian Candy huddled together in the doorframe, together with Hedwig the Owl and Nag the Adder.

" _Wha'?!_ " was all Hagrid got in before Harry and company jumped at him in a joint hug.

Even with his considerable size and strength, the combined weight pushed Hagrid backwards and he collapsed on his table, which, under his mass, emitted a sort of disdainful shriek of wood slowly splintering.

"Yer back!" Hagrid cheered. "I've been worryin' sick about yeh, everyone have, me'n Professor Dumbledore'n the Basilisk, we din't even know where yeh'd gone last…"

"Oh, we were just taking a stroll through the Forest," Hermione said.

"You know," Neville added, "visiting Toft. I was all set to go and they wanted to come with."

"But… wha', did they give yeh any trouble?!…" Hagrid asked, confused.

"Oh, no, they were quite wonderful hosts," Maximilian reassured him, "the issue came later. You see, there was an… accident, which left Neville unconscious and Miss Hedwig flightless, and—"

The pretend-wizard's explanations were cut short by demanding hoots from Hedwig, who was making it very clear she didn't intend to remain flightless for too long, and Hagrid was to heal her immediately. This instant. Now. Or she would bite.

The haughty owl was turned over to the half-giant, who made short work of her wing, and Maximilian resumed his tale:

"Well, as I said, Neville and Miss Hedwig were the only two who knew the way back… which we only realized _after_ we'd left the Wolves. Our bad, there."

"You got _lost_? In the _Forest_!? _All night?!_ " Hagrid asked, growing panicked.

"Not quite all night," Hermione corrected. "We tried camping in a clearing, but then we got into a spot of trouble with the Alizors."

" _THE ALIZORS?!_ "

"Yes, they wanted us to be their teachers, and, secondarily, dinner," she explained in a sing-song voice. "They've got Neville's wand, for the record, he's going to need a new one."

Hagrid let out a long sigh.

"Look, Hermy'ne, I'm jest gonna take yeh to Professor Dumbledore and we'll sort out all the funny business. Hm? The rest o'yeh, yeh can stay here'n have a cuppa tea with me."

"That sounds reasonable," she said. "Ah, one last thing. Toddy?"

She clapped her hand and the House-Elf with the pointy nose materialized before her. It was a neat trick Professor Dumbledore had taught her.

"Miss Hermione Granger is being back?!" were Toddy's first words as he saw her. " _Miss Hermione Granger is being back!_ "

"Yes, yes, I'm happy to be back too," Hermione cut him off, "but I'm going to need some minced raw meat — or rather, this adder here is."

Nag (as Hagrid had called him, though Hermione hadn't thought to ask yet) had mostly been ignoring the humans, and yet was sticking around in the hope of his promised reward.

* * *

With Nag well-fed and sent on his way, Hermione was free to head for the Headmaster's Office, where she thought it best to announcer herself through the Bored Boar. Even she had begun to doubt whether the gargoyle was actually all that alive at all, but once she'd stated her demand firmly enough, it lazily rose from its sitting position, shook to rid itself of the dust it had accumulated, and slowly, painfully climbed the steps of the stairwell. A moment later, Dumbledore's voice rang down:

"Hermione?" it said. "Do come up!"

To uneducated ears, Dumbledore's voice was the same cheerful sing-song hum it had always been, but Hermione, being (strangely enough) one of the few people who could call themselves his friends, noted a trace of worry there. It seemed Professor Hagrid hadn't been exaggerating — the Headmaster really _had_ been worrying.

Well, in hindsight, she supposed he'd been quite right.

"Albus! I'm so glad to see you!" she began cheerfully.

Dumbledore — a rarity — was _not_ sitting in his comfortable armchair, or petting Fawkes, or chatting with one of the Portraits, or any of the things he was usually doing when she came in. Dumbledore had _risen to greet her_. This was something he did extremely rarely.

"I'm sorry I worried you," she apologized immediately at this sign of great distress.

"You're quite forgiven," Dumbledore answered, beckoning for her to come closer. "It is me who have been an unforgivable friend and teacher alike — leaving you to get back on your own powers, rather than coming to look for you —"

"It's not your fault," she cut him off, biting her lip. "We were the ones who headed into the Forest without even warning you — wait, how did you even know I was in the Forest? I only just came back?"

Dumbledore shrugged evasively with a little smile:

"A Grand Sorcerer does have his ways…"

"Oh, _you,_ " she jabbed. "Hm. Well, I do owe you an explanation, I suppose. This all started very innocently as an outing into the Forbidden Forest…"

"Hermione, I do believe these two terms are antonymous… _innocently_ and _an outing in the Forbidden Forest_. I hate to lower myself to such redundant pleonasm, but the Forbidden Forest is, in fact, _Forbidden_."

" _Be that is it may_ ," Hermione resumed her story, "Neville, Harry, Ron, Maximilian, Hedwig and I were visiting the Wolves at their home, and we had a rather good time of it at first, but… Maximilian did something silly, Neville threw a childish tantrum, accidental magic got involved, and he and Hedwig ended up out of commission for several hours. We left… rather foolishly, in hindsight, I'll admit, but the point is we _left_ , and got lost, and then we realized only Neville and Hedwig knew the way back."

"Yes, that _was_ rather foolish," Dumbledore said sternly from behind his shining glasses.

"Yes," Hermione admitted quickly, uncomfortable, "well, anyway, we kept going in circles until we decided to camp for the night."

"Now, _that_ was the proper thing to do," Dumbledore congratulated. "Whatever else we decide by the end of this, that shall be five points to Gryffindor House."

Hermione gulped. Of course, there _would_ be consequences of the disciplinary sort. Probably.

Ahem.

"Er, thank you," she continued. "Well, we hadn't chosen our impromptu camping spot very well, because it turned out we we were right atop the Alizor… city, or whatever it's called."

Dumbledore blinked.

" _Tomberag?_ " he said. "Merlin help you, you actually blundered into Tomberag?!"

"Yes, if that is what they call it," she said. "For the record, not that I'm judging anyone, but their language isn't exactly what you'd call refined. Blah."

"Heheh, true enough," Dumbledore chuckled. "But… come now, tell me, what happened?"

"What happened was that the Alizor King wanted to… what is his name, anyway?"

"If he is still the same one I met sixty years ago," Dumbledore said thoughtfully, "and considering Alizor lifespands I would not question it, his name is King Tolgar. …Tell me, has his accent improved at all?"

"I wasn't there to see it sixty years ago, Albus," she answered, "but it _was_ quite dreadful. That overgrown ruffian has no concept of pronouns whatsoever."

"Quite as I remember him, yes," the old wizard reminisced. "Well, what did he want, you were saying?"

"He wanted to learn magic," she explained. "Wizards' magic — wanded, that is. Of course I told him it was quite illegal, but he was quite insistant. The sort of insistance that comes with a knife to the throat, you know."

"Couldn't you—"

"I must make it clear that they'd already gotten our wands at that point," she anticipated the query. "Well, I was forced to teach him some spells, although I made sure to play off his ignorance and only teach him the basest, least dangerous charms I could think of. _Lumos_ , _Scourgify_ , et caetera…"

"I'm sorry, what was that last one?"

" _Scourgify._ "

"No, after that," the Professor insisted.

"What — oh! No, no, that wasn't a spell. That was _et caetera_."

"Oh!" Dumbledore realized his mistake. "How ridiculous of me. That sounded like — no matter. Well, I must commend your finesse in this matter, but teaching a nonhuman any wizardry, even such harmless magics as these, is still a severe breach of the Wand Ban. Article Three. Item B."

"Yes, I'm aware," Hermione answered carelessly. "Not that I care _that_ much. I don't know under what circumstances it was passed, but the Wand Ban is a rather senseless law."

" _Be that as it may_ ," Dumbledore said, brow furrowed, "it is also one of the laws that the International Confederation of Wizards is the quickest and most eager to enforce… What you have told me, you must never repeat, nor your friends. It is of the _utmost importance_ , you must understand."

"Well, I suppose that's one more reason for us all to learn Occlumency, then," Hermione mused.

"…Yes, actually," Dumbledore remarked. "Which reminds me, have you yet mentioned the idea to your friends?"

"I have, yes," she said primly. "I told them about the Prophecy, too."

"You did _what_?"

" _Not the wording_!" Hermione defended herself. "I'm not mad. But I felt Harry had a right to know, and Harry wouldn't want to keep it a secret from Hedwig, Ron and Neville anyway once _he_ was told… as for Maximilian, this is the _least_ secret he has to keep."

"True, true," Dumbledore nodded. "I did not wish to burden young Harry with such heavy matters, and elected not to tell him earlier… perhaps I erred."

"I don't know whether you were right at the time," she said proudly, "but learning _I_ was working on loopholing it seemed to ease most of his worries rather quickly."

"Hm," Dumbledore hummed, amused. "Well, I will discuss disciplinary measures about all of this with Minerva… and I do mean Professor McGonagall, not her Portrait — but I believe all is well that ends well. You are all safe and sound, and wiser for it all, the wands are recovered…"

"Well, not _all_ of them—"

" _What?!"_

* * *

It was another twenty minutes before Hermione took leave of the weary Headmaster. This had all been an unexpected way to spend one's weekend, and rich in far-reaching consequences, much to Albus Dumbledore's dismay; but what was mostly on Hermione's mind was that she had homework for tomorrow, which she had been counting on Sunday afternoon to do. If she ran out of time, she could always make some with her _very special necklace_ , but she'd rather try to do it normally before she brought Time into it, and so there was no time to lose.

When she got back to her dorm room, however, and once she'd successfully avoided rid the questions of her curious female roommates, she happened to see her issue of the day's _Daily Prophet,_ which she'd obviously missed, lying on her bed.

What gave her pause was the headline.

No, surely she'd read wrong.

 _ **.**_

 _ **—**_

 _ **WILL THERE BE WAR?**_

 _ **Ministerial Goof Creates Diplomatic Incident**_

 _ **of First Gravity with Albanian Ministry**_

 _ **—**_

 ** _._**

Oh God no. How on Earth did Cornelius expect her to clear that up and _still_ get her homework done? All her books about international wizarding politics were clear: one did _not_ want to mess with Magical Albania.

But — that had to be the end of it, surely — she flipped through the pages anxiously —

 ** _._**

 ** _—_**

 _ **TOWARDS FAIRER INHERITANCE LAWS**_

 _ **Minister Fudge Shares the Advice**_

 _ **of Concerned Civilian L. M. on the Protection**_

 _ **of Wizarding Heritage Against**_

 _ **Emerging Fortunes**_

 ** _—_**

 ** _._**

"GAH! You just can't leave him alone _one week-end_ , can you?!"


	33. Letters

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _…And now for something completely different!_

 **Chapters XXI: _Letters_**

 _Mr M.,_

 _Don't even bother denying._ _I'll be brief:_ _stop manipulating C.F._ _He's_ _my_ _puppet, alright? We'll get nowhere trying to manipulate the same person at the same time._

 _To be clear, if you do not abide by my terms, I'm going to start_ _thinking_ _._

 _And if that doesn't scare you, ask your son. He'll explain._

 _H. G._

* * *

 _Dear Minister Duge,_

 _Thank Merlin I got to you in time. Yours is a common, perfectly understandable mistake. Minister Agon Nadroj's name does sound unfortunately similar to that awful Gobbledegook phrase, and you couldn't have known Minister Nadroj speaks fluent Northern Gobbledegook. That was simply unpredictable. All this being said, I don't think you made anything better by implying it was Mr Nadroj's fault. Yes, it was, too, for naming him that way in the first place, but if you haven't realized it yet: with your perfectly forgivable foreigner's grasp of Albanian, I'm afraid you didn't quite get the point across in the way you intended. If you catch my drift._

 _We should all be thankful Saint Mungo's were successful in untransfigurating you before the "Daily Prophet" covered the story. Donkey heads aren't very photogenic_

 _And yes, hexing you like that was childish of Minister Nadroj (although indicative of great skill at Human Transfiguration, I must note). Yes, Minister Nadroj is a terrible bully who deserves detention with Mr Filch. I wholeheartedly agree._

 _But again, he is a_ _dangerous_ _bully, with Aurors trained in Dark Magic who outnumber ours two to one, with an army of Heliopath, with a small but effective fleet of Dementors; and Albania has excellent relations with their Kobolds, who own large shares of the British Gringotts and are quite warlike to boot. We must act carefully, and quickly._

 _First of all, you will send a heartfelt letter of apology to Mr Nadroj, written in literate Albanian._ _No_ _, I'm not asking you to write it yourself; who do you take me for? Rather, you should ask Mr Barty Crouch Sr. Not only is he probably the greatest magical linguist of our time, but this will take his mind off his personal affairs; Quentin interviewed him a little while ago, but did not print the results because they were too depressing; the poor man's quite shaken by the revelations concerning his evil son's escape and survival. (How did he do that, anyway? I should look into it.)_

 _Then, of course, comes the less savory part of the endeavor. We are both people of the world, and I hope I shan't shock you by calling the donation we will make to our dear Albanian friends what it is: a bribe. A generous one; I'm sorry, but that is essential. Mr Nadroj is a Dark Wizard, but he is also a politician, and thus well-versed in the subtleties of bribery; if we offer him too little under the proverbial table he'll just get even_ _more_ _offended. I know this is a heavy tax on the Ministry budget; unfortunately, it seems a given that the costly investigations into new money that Mr Malfoy proposed in my absence must be cancelled._

 _It's too bad, yes, but this curse has a silver lining; I don't think that plan was ever all that practical. I have said this before and I shall say it again: Mr Malfoy is a fine person, but, in matters of politics, is as much an amateur as you are in the subtleties of the Albanian tongue. The crux of it is, in this case, that he doesn't quite realize what is a sound plan and what is throwing Galleons out the windows. The number of his donations to St Mungo's will show you_ _he_ _can afford to cover any cause he sets his mind upon with heaps of gold — something which an official institution simply cannot afford to do._

 _Well, I believe that about covers this week's political matters. In answer to your question Friday last, I believe a bowtie would be most suitable for such an occasion, more so than a necktie at least. Do give my regards to the brides!_

 _Hermione Jean Granger_

* * *

 _Mr M.,_

 _I am very unhappy with you._ _I told you to quite getting in my way, and yet you continue not to get it. I go through the trouble of foiling your hair-brained muggleborn-exploiting scheme, and here, not two weeks later, you start with Cornelius about pardoning Mr Y. or whoever._ _This simply will not do._

 _As you appear to be thicker than a cauldron bottom, I'll explain it to you plain and clear._ _You are in my power_ _. I have more sway over C.F. than you ever had. I could have you arrested before you can say mudblood. The only reason I haven't yet is that, with your regular donations to Saint Mungo's and now that A is out of your reach, you are overall doing more good than bad to this country, from a purely pragmatic point of view. Well, that, and the fact that Azkaban is a dreadful place where I don't particularly want to send anyone (and if you don't see why, then that's thanks to a neat little knick-knack I have that you lack, it's called a conscience)._

 _One last thing: if you should still hope that your L. will return any day now and save you from my muddy clutches (Boo! Hiss!)… he's out. Finished. Double-out. Irrecuperable. Vanquished. I, A.D., H.P. and a few other such important people made quite sure of that a few years ago._

 _H.G._

* * *

 _Honored H.G.,_

 _I commend your intelligence and courage in this matter. If you speak true on the matter of L.V., I would be a fool not to recognize your hold over me. You are from now on my new M. and I your humble servant. If I may do anything to prove myself…_

 _L.M._

* * *

 _M.,_

 _Please cut the groveling. This line of thinking may too foreign for you to comprehend I'd rather have you a honest and free man than an enslaved but immoral one. Still, it will have to do._

 _Well then, grown accustomed to our quiet life of luxury, have we? I knew a former S. such as yourself could be reasonable. There's no need, for the record, to pretend you feel any loyalty whatsoever towards me. It is exceedingly obvious that you hate every second of this. I am not L.V., and therefore I do not care._

 _If you truly intend to be of practical use, why don't you start with discussing my next proposal with C.F., and, fonce he's parroted my views, wholeheartedly support them?_

 _Oh, and before I forget: you are to immediately ask D. (the D. who lives in your basement, not the blond git) whether he'd like you to free him. If he says yes, do so and then send him to me. No arguing._

 _H.G._

* * *

 _Dear Miss Granger,_

 _I must say I did not expect such enthusiasm from Lucius Malfoy about your new House-Elf Rights laws idea. I shall be plain: I didn't put much stock in the idea myself at first, but if such a reliable friend as Lucius — who is himself a House-Elf owner at that — supports my proposal, then it seems I was wrong on this. Well, the best cannot account for everything; that is why one needs advisors, of course. And when my two favorite advisors agree so perfectly on something, how could I possibly argue?_

 _As to your second suggestion, which, in accordance with your stated wishes, I have for now kept quiet even from Lucius… well,… really? Snake rights? It's true that Mr Quentin's article on the Hogwarts Basilisk fostered some goodwill towards serpents, but that seems rather excessive and brusque. Although you do make a convincing arguments — I, and the public, don't like Banshees much better than snakes, and yet Banshees_ _are_ _officially recognized as sentient beings. There is indubitably a gap there, it's true. But is it really politically advantageous to close it_ _now_ _?_

 _Your indebted friend,_

 _Minister Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Order of Merlin, First Class_

* * *

 _Dear Hermione Granger,_

 _You will find the latest edition enclosed. My owl doesn't like bacon, why does Harry's? Feathers are always nice though. Hello! (I meant to say that earlier but I forgot.)_

 _Luna Lovegood_

* * *

 _Dear Luna,_

 _…_ _why did you write me, exactly? We see each other nearly every day._

 _Hermione_

* * *

 _Dear Hermione Granger,_

 _I wrote you because you seem to be doing an awful lot of writing lately._

 _Luna Lovegood_

* * *

 _Dear Luna,_

 _I'd ask why you didn't acknowledge me when I tried to talk to you about my writing this morning, but I think I know. You think this conversation, having been started in letters, should be carried on letters? That seems to be needless overworking of our poor owls, but fine, if we must._

 _The reason I write quite so much is that I'm trying to manage two of the most volatile and dangerous political figures in this country at the same time. One being Cornelius Fudge, and the other the father of a certain blond idiot._

 _Hermione_

* * *

 _Lady Granger,_

 _If we are to continue communicating in this manner, I have taken the precaution to begin enchanting my letters with anti-spying jinxes. Thus we can dispense with those cumbersome initials. Assuming it is within your capability, I would advise you to do the same._

 _As you have no doubt been informed, I obeyed you in the matter of Cornelius. If I am to aid you, I would urge you not to try for too many laws that would hinder my fortunes… but I am, again, in your hands._

 _I asked, and Dobby does not appear to desire freedom._

 _Your humble servant,_

 _Lucius Malfoy_

* * *

 _Dear Hermione Granger,_

 _Gadzooks, these clouds are a lovely shade of pink. Do be careful when dealing with Cornelius Fudge; he's secretly a very Dark Wizard, you know. Connections to the Rotfang Conspiracy and all._

 _Luna Lovegood_

* * *

 _M.,_

 _I_ _have_ _had A.D. enchant this letter against spying — a valuable suggestion — but I think I'm going to keep talking with initials. I find it's just inherently fun, and since you have no ability nor valid reason to stop me, I shall continue to do so in the future._

 _Even from what little I know of him, not for a moment do I believe D. really turned away freedom._ _You_ _did_ _cancel any putative orders about never speaking against his Master, I hope? If you_ _forgot_ _, I am again very disappointed with you. D. (the other D.) should have explained to you by now that spotting these sorts of loophole is my favorite hobby._

 _C. F. tells me D.U. has been trying to influence the Wizengamot lately. Something or other about Muggle-Borns and Lycanthropes. We can't have that. Do try to see if she can be made to_ _see reason_ _. Barring that, counterbribe anybody she might have already corrupted and dig up some blackmail material on her._

 _H.G._

* * *

 _Dear Luna,_

 _Please focus when writing a letter. In all kindness and honestly, if your missives were any longer, they'd give me a headache._

 _I can guarantee that_ _I_ _am darker and more of a conspirator than Cornelius Fudge. Now Lucius Malfoy,_ _there_ _I see your point. Also, I have been running this country for month and I haven't heard of any Rotfang Conspiracy. I am pretty sure no such thing exists._

 _Hermione_

* * *

 _Dear Luna,_

 _…_ _When I said 'running the country', I didn't mean that literally._

 _Also, I am_ _not_ _dark to any real extent, thank you very much. Just a little bit manipulative on the side. And I can prove I'm not corrupted by the Rotfang Conspiracy: as I will show you next time we meet, my teeth are perfectly clean and healthy._

 _Hermione_

* * *

 _Lady Granger,_

 _Please_ _, for Merlin's sake, do not treat this like a_ _game_ _. This is hard enough as it is._

 _I_ _have_ _done as you asked with Dobby, who should have come to see you and Dumbledore by the time this letter reaches you._

 _Madam Umbridge is harder to catch than a kneazle. The only reprehensible thing of which I could find a record is bribing, about which you should know that, while frowned upon, it's not technically against the law in this country. (Why do you think_ _I_ _risked it with my background?)_

 _Your humble servant,_

 _Lucius Malfoy_

* * *

 _M.,_

 _Stop calling yourself 'humble', honorifics or not. Considering how you dress, it's not even funny, it's_ _ludicrous_ _._

 _I have indeed met D. Very nice fellow too, and unusually talented at magic. But the_ _scars_ _. Oooh. You should be_ _ashamed_ _. I'm very cross, M. …You know what. You will find enclosed a list of worthy Muggle charities. I want you to donate a thousand Galleons to one of your choosing. Now. No excuses._

 _I believe I shall enact similar punishments if you keep displeasing me._

 _H.G._

* * *

 _Lady Granger,_

 _I will be frank: this stung. Well played. For your information, I elected to 'give' to the 'Blue Cross', if only because that way the money will be going to creatures vaguely less disgusting than Muggles._

 _With or without workable blackmail material, I have had a_ _talk_ _with Dolores. It would appear she is acting out of personal belief rather than interest, which rather hinders matters. I shall keep you updated on my progress._

 _If I'm not mistaken, Easter approaches; no doubt you'll have a lot of fun going back to your Muggle cabin and playing with your pet Muggle family. (Sigh.)_

 _Your very-appropriately-dressed-thank-you-very-much servant,_

 _Lucius Malfoy_

* * *

 _Dear Luna,_

 _I know I told you to stop writing me, but that only went for when we're both at Hogwarts. As I am now at home, it'd not only be appropriate, but highly appreciated, if you were to resume writing. Ron, Max and Harry have already written, and I have answered them. When you're kind enough to be coherent, your letters are always a treat._

 _My vacation has been treating me well. (Though it's only_ _partially_ _a vacation; I still do have to write Cornelius daily to make sure he doesn't accidentally set an eldritch creature free from the Department of Mysteries, or blunder and cause the disappearance of an entire magical bird genus. Do understand that both of these things are genuine happenstances from the last three days.) My friend Nettle is well and her children as well. Tsh has been learning to read! I can't tell you how happy that makes me, it's the first time I find a snake who has any aptitude at all for it._

 _My mother and father are also quite alright and happy to see me. Business is booming. No, I don't know if this has anything to do with the Rotfang Conspiracy spreading to the Muggle world, but if it_ _does_ _, you can rest assured that the Doctors Granger will fight it off as they best know how: through the power of floss and fillings._

 _Hermione,_

* * *

 _Dear Hermione,_

 _Hope you're doing well at home. We had a big egg chase here at the Burrow, Mom even got Bill to visit for the party — not Charlie though. Did I ever tell you about wizard Easter? It's lots of fun, actually. The eggs are enchanted. They move around. Some of them can even fly. Ginny and Harry caught a lot of those on a broom; I'd tell you what Seeker techniques they used but I'm sure I'd just bore you._

 _Before you ask, yes, I have started my homework and I practice Parseltongue regularly. No need for scolding. Please._

 _Write me soon,_

 _Ron_

* * *

 _Dear Hermione,_

 _I assume this letter came as a surprise to you, but Ron, Fred and George have been telling me some_ _very surprising things_ _about you. That Cornelius Fudge is a spineless pile of clay is beyond all doubt, but to learn you control him so thoroughly_ _is_ _still quite the revelation — though in hindsight, the policies he's been passing lately were surprisingly logical. I should have guessed. I suppose I have to thank you for the increase in funding of our department then? Well_ _thank_ _you! If there's anything I can do, be it advice or some special work, I'm at your disposal._

 _And now, speaking properly as a father rather than a Department Head: as Ron has no doubt written you, Easter is always a fun occasion at the Burrow, it's really too bad you didn't come along with Harry. My and Molly's offer from last summer is always valid, you know — drop in at any time!_

 _Arthur Weasley_

* * *

 _Dear Mr Weasley,_

 _I would be delighted to come to Otter St Catchpole next Easter, but right now I just needed a rest from magic for a week. It_ _is_ _refreshing sometimes to wake up and be sure you can take your breakfast in peace without worrying about the enslaved magical race who cooked it or about bumping into a floating candelabra. You should try going Muggle some time if you get overworked._

 _Speaking of work, well, yes, I've more or less been ruling Magical Britain, and unless I get bored I am going to keep doing it for the foreseeable future, too. I was indeed, in all modesty, responsible for the flare of reason in the Ministry's latest policies._

 _As to favors, I hate to ask, but if you would try not to get arrested Lucius Malfoy arrested right now? Not that I like him very much, but as of late I've got him under my control as well, so he's more useful free than in Azkaban. You've got to admit that such a fantastic fortune, if I can steer him into donating it in the right places, is an invaluable asset. He also has the advantage of being devoid of any ethics whatsoever, which, no offense, simply makes him better suited to politicking on our behalf._

 _Hermione Granger_

* * *

 _Dear Hermione,_

 _I assume Ron's already told you about Easter and stuff. These are some of the nicest holidays I've ever head. Just what did you write Mr Weasley, though? Once he was done reading it he just_ _dropped_ _the letter and muttered "She's scaring me" with haunted eyes._

 _Harry_

* * *

 _Dear Albus,_

 _Thank you for your concern (and the same goes for Mr Weasley who no doubt wrote you), but I am_ _not_ _headed down a path of darkness, thank you very much. I'm just being pragmatic. Don't pretend: I know you've done quite the same thing in your day._

 _Hermione Granger_

* * *

 _Dear Miss Granger,_

 _I cannot thank you enough for liberating me from Ms. Skeeter's stifling grasp. It was such a short time ago that my talents were wasting away in her bondage… I must be boring you, but I simply cannot ever write you without renewing these thanks._

 _To these I add another reason to be thankful: it was a stroke of genius on your gracious part to send me Mr Dobby. His quick mind, eagerness to help, and stealth will be invaluable, and I believe he is as keen on the idea of creating a newspaper as you and I. (_ _That_ _was also a brilliant suggestion.)_

 _I shall keep you updated on our progress. If you have any other staff recommendations…_

 _Your much-indebted friend,_

 _Quentin the Quick Quotes Quill_


	34. Schemes

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _Do I spoil you with these fast updates? It may be that there will come a time when I can't keep up these insane rates. But for now, well, enjoy! And review! Maybe! Please!_

 **Chapter XXXII: _Schemes_**

Hermione's return to Hogwarts was a happy day. Her holidays had been perfect — her parents and the Dysons were all delighted to see her, they were all quite well, Nettle and family had been overjoyed, Tsh _could read_ ; to boot, there was the satisfaction of again steering the Wizarding World away from disaster several times.

And there was one last thing: she had an idea for the Prophecy.

At any rate, her first day of class was pleasant as ever, Professor Snape aside; she felt she was making true progress in Charms when it came to quick casting, though Harry still had her beaten there, by far, followed by Ron.

Between their last class and dinner, Hermione took the time to quickly greet her various Hogwarts acquaintances, and, for those whom she hadn't been able to write, ask how Easter had gone for them.

First, she made a beeline for the Third Floor Corridor, armed with a new set of short-length Portkeys provided by Dumbledore through Toddy. Apophis had finally made a complete recovery and was testing out an enchanted, flexible woolen "armor", the joint work of Professors Flitwick and Dumbledore; nearby, Sirius had been helping with the overhaul of the rest of the Third Floor Corridor, which he refused to tell her about, the sneaky dog.

Minerva the Portrait had not done anything of note, devoting this week of relative peace away from the students to reading. It turned out she really liked 19th century romances. Hermione wondered whether that was a personal trait of Minerva's, or something she shared with the real Professor McGonagall (he thought of the older witch, behind her stern glasses, cracking open a Brontë Sisters yarn, or some magical equivalent, was a highly amusing one). She didn't dare to ask, even from her friend; discussing the difference between a Portrait and their Original seemed taboo in Portrait society, and Hermione didn't want to put her canvas-dwelling friend in an awkward position.

As for the Basilisk, now that the weather was warmer, she had discovered the joys of swimming in the Great Lake — and there, the ancient snake had befriended the Giant Squid. In fact, the way the Basilisk spoke of the Squid made it sound worryingly like the Squid was sentient too. Reluctantly, Hermione convinced herself to set the matter aside for now; the Squid, sapient or not, was clearly not unhappy, and _she_ had a Prophecy-smashing scheme to set in motion.

Once she was done with dinner, a quick affair despite Fred and George's hounding her about the new toys they'd developed while at the Burrow, she once more found her way to the Slytherin Dungeons. She had no need of an Invisibility Cloak this time; she'd remembered the location, and anyway, she was coming openly, as a visitor, not as a spy. She politely knocked on the camouflaged entrance, and was soon confronted with one of the Slytherin Prefects: a black-skinned girl with a pointed nose and a top-rate sneer.

"Your presence amongst our ranks," she sneered, "is not required. Withdraw."

"I shall do no such thing," Hermione sneered back in her best Slytherin tone — which was, perhaps, a tad hammy. "I'm here to purchase a minion and I won't leave until I—"

" _Purchase a minion?!_ " the other repeated, and where a mere mortal would have gaped, the trained Slytherin's sneer merely melted into a skeptical smirk.

"Well," Hermione continued without backing down, "I suppose renting would be a more appropriate term… I only need them for a little while."

"Enough, you arrogant lionspawn!" the outraged Slytherin blurted, dramatic. "Return wherever you came from and get your goons from Hufflepuff or something. No Slytherin shall bow to you!"

"Excuse me, Moores," said a young boy's voice from behind her, "is that Hermione Granger?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Mina Moores answered poutingly.

"Cool…" said the other boy, stepping around his housemate to get a better look at Hermione.

"Er, thank you," the girl in question said, awkwardly.

Hermione thought he boy must be a First- or Second-Year — not only from his size, but because he didn't appear to quite know how to sneer and act operatic just yet. He did have smirks down, though, and he wore a silver ring set with a ruby, so there was clearly some Slytherin him yet.

"Go back to bed, Wilkes," ordered Prefect Moores.

"I'll say not!" the young Wilkes refused. "Lady Granger, you're interesting. I think I'd very much like to be your minion. For a fee, naturally."

" _How dare you? You TRAITOR!_ " screeched Mina. "You _vile opportunist! YOU DISGRACE TO THE NAME OF SLY-_ "

"How is being treacherous and opportunistic _not_ Slytherin?" Hermione asked logically.

 _This_ time, Miss Moores had quite lost her countenance and she gaped openly.

"Now!" Hermione clasped her hand together. "Mr Wilkes, I believe we were discussing a business arrangement? I know a secret room nearby, if you'll follow me."

"A pleasure, madam," Wilkes nodded with a wide grin, and he followed her to an antechamber whose entrance was hidden behind the rusty suit of armor of Old Sir Cadogan.

"Well then, Mr Wilkes, I don't think we have been properly introduced?"

"Douglas Aristotle Wilkes, First of his Name," Douglas offered a hand.

"Hermione Jean Granger, Lady Macbrains, Order of Merlin, Second Class," she recited, shaking the younger wizard's hand. "So. You mentioned a price?"

"The standard henchpersonry rate these days is twenty Galleons a month," Douglas Wilkes said, business-like, "for Hogwarts students, anyway. If, by the end of our contract, you sign me a certificate that my services were outstanding, I'm willing to lower that to sixteen Galleons, three Sickles. No, make that Sixteen Galleons, because it's you."

"Well… thank you," she said, "but that's still rather steep, isn't it?"

"Minion Rates, m'am," Douglas said with a contented grin.

"…That pun was awful," Hermione repressed a laugh, "but how do you even know about…"

"My aunt Charity is the Muggle Studies Professor."

"Ah, right, that would do it," Hermione nodded.

"Anyway," Douglas said, "if you _do_ find all that a little beyond your means, then you may want to hear this: I also accept candy."

Hermione chuckled again. (Who knew Slytherins could be so funny?) It was easy to forget it with their perpetual air of Shakespearean bad guys in training, but Slytherin First- and Second-Years were still, at the end of the day, children.

"Alright, 5 Galleons, and a Chocolate Frog a week," she accepted.

"Agreed!" the newly-hired Slytherin sealed the deal, licking his chops at the thought of it.

"You're diabolical," Hermione jested.

"I try," the minion replied with feinted ennui. "Okay, so. What exactly do you need me to do, l— m— er, oh, wait. Gotta ask you something first."

"What?"

"What do I call you?" Douglas asked, drawing a notebook and pencil from his robes. "Boss? Milady? Lady Hermione? Miss—"

"Miss will be fine," she stopped him in his tracks.

"Righto, Miss," said Douglas, still smiling, jutting it down in the notebook. "So, miss, what's the job?"

"Ah well — hm. It will require a disguise," she listed off, "a hamster, some ants… regular, not Conjured, to be safe. Also some paint, to write on the walls… You're going to have your picture taken, with the mask on…"

"Really?" Douglas asked, playing a smirk to great effect. "No hexing Malfoy on your behalf? I mean, I _assumed_ …"

"Well, I may ask you things of that nature," Hermione said thoughtfully, "later on. But for now, here's the plot."

* * *

Tuesday, unfortunately, did not carry on as well as Monday had begun. The day was mostly alright as far as lessons were concerned, but around five, on her way to the Great Lake, she first bumped into Crabbe — an event that knocked the solution to an Arithmancy problem she'd been considering out of her mind, to her annoyance — and then a few paces later was intercepted by Professor McGonagall.

"Miss Granger," the Transfigurator said, "Professor Dumbledore needs to see you. Now. It is most urgent."

This was a very inconvenient time.

She'd promised herself to spend some more time with Neville and Harry, in earnest, as a result of their Forbidden Forest adventure, something which she had only partly been doing so far. And tonight, she'd decided she would head straight to the Gryffindor Common Room, _avoiding_ Minerva's frame — as soon as she was done being introduced to the Giant Squid by the Basilisk, that was. Well, at any rate, if she was interrupted now, then this definitely put a spanner in her schedule, and —

"But I have things to do…!" she complained half-heartedly.

"Then you can use your Time-Turner later tonight," McGonagall argued, "if necessary. Come now, we mustn't keep him waiting."

" _You_ 're telling _me_ to use my Time-Turner out of schedule?"

"If that is what it takes to get you to come along, _yes_ , I am."

"…Alright, I believe you. This must be _really_ serious."

* * *

"…So what has Cornelius done _this_ time?" Hermione said at once when she entered Dumbledore's office.

"Nothing," Dumbledore said, "nothing at all."

Hermione found her friend and Headmaster strangely grave — not to mention his clothes were unusually sober and dark.

"What's the matter?" she asked, also serious.

"Professor Karkaroff has vanished," he announced.

"…the Headmaster of Durmstrang Institute?"

"Yes."

"The former Death Eater?"

"The very same."

She frowned.

"When you say _vanished_ , do you mean as in Vanishing Sickness, or as in he's run away?"

"I mean that he's most probably been viciously murdered."

"Ah, erm, not to make light of any human life, but why do you particularly care?"

"Barty Junior," Dumbledore said, tapping on his desk, tense. "You may recall that Professor Karkaroff was pardoned because he denounced other supporters of Tom's to the British authorities."

"Barty Crouch Jr. was one of those Death Eaters…!" she understood.

"Precisely," Dumbledore confirmed. "Already in his later years at Hogwarts, Barty was nothing if not determined and vengeful. Not to mention he was obviously very devoted to the cause of the Death Eater, such as it is. He would not suffer a traitor to live, if it were within his power to end their life, preferably in a painful and fear-striking manner."

"Alright," Hermione thought aloud, "but you don't stay alive with enemies on both sides by being an idiot. Britain did publicize the news of Barty's survival — I asked as much of Cornelius. So I imagined Karkaroff would be on his guard?"

"Yes," Dumbledore nodded, "my contacts at Durmstrang tell me he'd been holing himself up in his quarters atop the Iron Tower these past months."

"A Tower which, if I recall correctly, is protected by enchantments of the same caliber as Hogwarts's."

"Indeed. How Crouch could have broken in unnoticed remains a mystery to me."

"And even then!" she bounced back. "Even then, Karkaroff was no slouch with a wand, was he? To be Headmaster of Durmstrang—! You'd expect some large, Dark duel to blow out the room of the Institute, not some… some phantom abduction."

"Well, it is as I told you," Dumbledore said wistfully. "Some have compared the Death Eaters' methods to Muggle terrorism, and none of them embodied this more than Bartemius Crouch Junior. There was, towards the end of the war, a Death Eater who was feared — feared _personally_ — more than any other. He'd take children, infants…"

"He killed _children?_ "

"Not _always_. Such was the genius of his cruelty. He merely _took_ them. Some he brought back, scarred in body and mind… and others he never did. By adding doubt, just a glimmer of hope, he made what was already an unspeakable crime so much worse for the parents… Ah, I recall… Sometimes, in broad daylight, he would ride a broomstick, slowly, over wizarding land, too high up to be caught with a curse, challenging anyone to fly after him — a challenge no one took, of course.

"That master of fear, that loathsome figure of darkness, almost as bad as Lord Voldemort himself, that man turned out to be Barty Crouch Jr.

If I am not mistaken, if he is indeed behind the disappearance of Igor Karkaroff, then wherever he is, I am sure he is cackling at the thought that even I cannot puzzle how he did it. And that is certainly why he chose such a complex method rather than a straightforward attack. To confuse us. To once again make Death Eaters seem like an incomprehensible force of evil, rather than a conceited band of dreadful, dreadful human beings."

Hermione remained silent for a moment, taking this all in. She was coming to realise just what the war had _been_. And if just one of his lieutenants was so terrible, just what had the Turban himself done, that even Rubeus Hagrid was scared to say his _name_?

She slammed a small, packed fist on Dumbledore's desk.

"We can't let him build up that fear anew," she said, "we _can't_. We must investigate. Find out how he did it. Publish all the details. Make him just a common criminal again."

"I'm glad you agree," Dumbledore said. He held forward a silver teaspoon. "Hold this."

Hermione barely had the time to process what she'd done; reflexively, she reached at the unexpected implement, and suddenly the world was squeezing and twirling around her.

A Portkey.

Confounded Dumbledore and his unpredictabili—

They were there.

The Durmstrang Headmaster's Office felt foreign and familiar at the same time; it was as if someone had taken Dumbledore's office, painted it black, and sprinkled it with a healthy dose of gloomy despair. A Dementor would have liked it here, but she seriously questioned the sanity of a _wizard_ who chose to coop himself up in such a place.

She looked around, but there were no portraits of fallen Headmasters on the black iron walls, just awards and plaques. No witnesses, then. Bah. That would probably have been too easy a weak spot to exploit, even for other wizards.

"How are we here? Where did you find that Portkey?"

"I didn't find it, my dear, I _made_ it," Dumbledore said offhandedly, and then with no segue he started muttering chants and waving his wand about.

Hermione watched the Professor's displays of detection magic and Aurology for a while, idly trying to figure out if there were any spells in there that she recognized from her reading.

Mindful of what she'd learned from detective stories, she was also looking around for clues, although to tell the truth she wasn't quite sure where to start. But she did know that the most ordinary details often turned out to be the decisive clues. Well, that's how it was in the novels and in the moving pictures; it might well have just been for dramatic effect; but she wasn't sure, so she tried it anyway.

This proved to be surprisingly challenging, because there was very little about Professor Igor Karkaroff's office that was at all ordinary. Pointy devices, a twisted mockery of Dumbledore's trinkets, where creaking and whining at every corner, varying dark tomes lay haphazardly on the floor, where a few loose items of clothing were also scattered. Bubbles that seemed to be made out of blood and ink, doubtless produced by one of the machines, floated about, though they thankfully didn't leave any stains when they inevitably popped. The candles on the walls burned black. There was a sort of pencil holder on a shelf, which contained several black and red quills, and it was obsidian, fashioned in the shape of a grinning skull.

From the high ceiling, hung an ominous candelabra, the very type of heavy, ominous, black ironwork that Zorro or Robin Hood, depending on the situation, would either swing from, or have the bad guy crushed under thanks to the timely severing of a woefully unprotected piece of rope. The sole window was too small to fit through, triangular, and its no doubt enchanted glass was strengthened by a good old set of bars (apparently steel, though depending on the extent of Karkaroff's paranoia, and personal wealth, Goblin Silver could not be ruled out).

In truth, the only remotely normal item in the room was a mug of coffee sitting in the middle of the Dark Headmaster's stone desk.

The mug was made of bronze, and as dark-looking as a mug of coffee could possibly be, but that still wasn't very much. It clearly wasn't enchanted.

And it was only half-drunk.

"Hmm."

Using the Levitation Charm, she remotely tipped the mug over — one had to preserve any fingerprints — and spilled some of the remaining coffee on the desk, where the long-cold liquid pooled near the bottom of its former container, as was proper.

"Ahah."

Dumbledore, who as just done casting one of his aurological charm, turned towards her.

"Have you been making any progress?" he said, regaining a bit of geniality. "I must ask, because I certainly have not. All magical locks and protective enchantments on the door, walls and window are intact and unbroken. No trace, even disguised, of any Apparition, nor House-Elf Popping, nor Portkey Travel — until today, of course. I am frankly mystified.""

"I have something, yes, Albus," she answered. "It's only natural that you wouldn't find any signs of forced entry…"

"Do you mean to suggest Karkaroff invited Barty willingly, under some disguise?" Dumbledore suggested. "Polyjuice Potion, perhaps? If I recall correctly, he was an expert in its brewing, thanks to the teaching of Horace—"

"No, Albus," Hermione interrupted him. "I am suggesting Barty Crouch Jr. _never_ _came here_."

"Really?" Dumbledore said dismissively. "Are we back to the Vanishing Sickness hypothesis, now?"

"No, you don't understand! Barty didn't come to Karkaroff — _it's Karkaroff who was taken to_ —"

It is a strange phenomenon that people trying to communicate important information are often interrupted at the most inconvenient times. Fate, being the same old habit-bound party-ruiner it had ever been, did not fail to deliver at that moment, in the form of loud knocking on the iron door.

"…Professor," Hermione asked in a whisper, "I neglected to ask. You _did_ ask for permission to investigate here?"

Dumbledore blinked.

"Oh, my. It seems to have slipped my mind entirely."

" _Merlin_. With Dumbledores like this, who needs Cornelius?"


	35. Conflicts

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Another fast update. Again, please tell me what you think in review form, be it good or bad! Speaking of which: a Guest complained that my "no shipping" pledge seems to be in conflict with the occasional allusion to Ron's crush on Hermione (and Harry finding Cho Chang pretty). I beg to disagree. What I meant by no shipping was that I have no plans to develop any of this into a true romance that would have a major role in the story. If the mere idea that any of these teenagers could temporarily find each other attractive at one point of their life offends you, then folks, I cannot help you any further._

 **Chapter XXXII: _Conflicts_**

Hermione Granger had no small amounts of trust in Albus Dumbledore. Professor Dumbledore was the Headmaster of Hogwarts, an academic genius, had a moral fiber the width of an old oak tree, and was widely believed to be the greatest wizard alive. Professor Dumbledore was the only man the Turban had ever truly feared. Professor Dumbledore was one of the reasons, if not _the_ reason, that Wizarding Britain hadn't long ago plunged into chaos.

But all this knowledge wasn't quite able to comfort her in the tense minutes as Dumbledore just stood in front of the iron door and the Durmstrang people banged against it and shouted imprecations in various tongues.

What had they gotten themselves into? Quick, think of something, anything.

"…Albus!" she said in a flash of inspiration. "Don't you have a Phoenix? Call him! Get him to take us out of here!"

"Hermione," Dumbledore explained calmly, "this is very sensible thinking, but I'm afraid I must face the consequences of my rash actions myself."

" _What about me?!"_ she hissed through gritted teeth.

"And," Dumbledore continued smoothly, "at any rate, Fawkes is recovering from a Burning Day, and in no condition to transport anyone."

"Oh no…" Hermione said, both in response to Dumbledore, and as she saw electric-blue sparkles begin to melt through the door. But the Headmaster stood steadfast in front of the gate. "What are you _doing_?"

"My dear, I find your lack of faith in my abilities… dismaying, to say the least," came Dumbledore's répartie as the guards' spell finished melting away the door. "I _am_ adept at politics, my dear, even as you. I even daresay my experience gives me a step up."

The incomers were varied in identity and costume — some were students, Sixth- or Seventh Years by the look of them, others had an air of Professorship about them, and three looked like law-enforcement officers of some sort, whether Norway called them Aurors or something else Hermione didn't know. But their varied appearances, occupations and costumes melted away underneath the identical expressions plastered on their faces as they saw Dumbledore — a mix of anger, shock, and utter, utter confusion.

"Albus Humlesnurr?!" said one of the Durmstrang people. "Hva gjør du her?"

"Nur ein bisschen Sightseeing, Herr Czarodziejski," Dumbledore answered in German.

"Dies ist ein eingeschränkter Bereich!" one of the Professors said accusingly, wagging a finger.

"Czy jest teraz?" Dumbledore said with a falsely innocent air. "Przepraszam! Nie wiedziałem o tym."

"Vould you shpeak always same, da?!" said one of the probably-Aurors. "This _merkelig_ enough now, no more wid! Humf!"

" _Mais bien sûr,_ " Dumbledore said pleasantly. " _La langue de Molière vous serait-elle agréable ?_ "

"Blast you! Shtop messink vit us, Dumledsnurr!"

"Gladly," Dumbledore finally returned to English. "We were just going on our way, Hermione and I."

The presumably Norwegian Auror spluttered some, looking for his ords. "Bot — na, no! You cannot! Is you… you can, you crimin- me arrest you, fergotsek! Due process! _Law!_ "

"Dear me," the British wizard said with a pained look, "that all seems quite boring. Are you sure that I can't just go home?"

"Dat ridikulous!" the Auror said. "You is _arrest_."

"Certainly not," Dumbledore continued with confidence. "Now just get me to the nearest facilities for purchasing a Portkey, and—"

" _YOU IS ARREST!_ "

"I deny that statement."

" _Follow! To cell!_ "

"On what charges?" he asked with naive curiosity.

"…spyink, maybe? Interferring with _due processes_?"

"I'm certainly not spying, and I'm not interfering with anything, it is you who won't let me and young Miss Granger go. This was just a perfectly innocent school outing."

" _To ay crime skene?_ "

"Defence Against the Dark Arts class," Dumbledore said as if that explained everything. "Is it not obvious that some very Dark Magic has been committed here? Perfect for some hands-on experience."

"Dat is most ridiculous story I ever hear," growled the Auror. " _That vill never—_ "

"If there is a trial," Dumbledore said weightily. "But if there is a trial, and, as expected, I win it, well, in all modesty, I do not believe arresting Albus Dumbledore on erroneous charges would look good on your résumé."

The Auror and the others continued gaping. Dumbledore then simply began walking forward, through the crowd, and Hermione followed behind with a big admirative grin.

* * *

Hermione had but a few words as soon as the pair rematerialized in the Headmaster's Office.

"You are _good_. That was _quite_ amazing."

"I suppose," the Professor replied with a tired smile. "It loses a lot of its appeal after eighty years. But yes, I am rather good at this little game."

"Your influence must help, I suppose," she thought out loud.

"It does, yes," Dumbledore answered as he sat back down in his red armchair. "Now. I believe you had a theory you meant to share with me?"

"Ah, right, yes, I do," she got back on track. "You do remember how Crouch got into the Third Floor Corridor months ago?"

"I do," the wizard nodded."Barty had somehow exploited the Serpent's Mark to be pulled to Apophis, instead of Apophis being pulled to him… bypassing all wards, of course. An impressive display of magical mastery, especially considering the Mark initially tied Apophis to Lucius Malfoy, not to him. Barty always was an extremely brilliant student… For the third time, it seems I had failed to see the signs of budding darkness inside an eager mind."

Dumbledore appeared lost in contemplation for a moment. A ringing from one of the silver instruments cluttering the office jolted him back and he said:

"Well, what do you make of it?"

"Albus, don't you see?" she continued her explanation. "The Dark Mark — the Heir of Slytherin — the Serpent's Mark — it's all connected! The Dark Mark is a variation of the Serpent's Mark, that's where the Turban got the idea — Voldemort cast both Crouch's Dark Mark and Apophis's Mark, and so _there_ was the connection! He —"

"Of _course_ …" Dumbledore said in a faint voice. "I should have seen it before… Clever, very clever, and so terrible. And if Crouch could do _this_ , then an extension of the same principle… he summoned Karkaroff to him like Voldemort might have, using the link of their Dark Marks…"

"Well," Hermione said with a grin, "that's that, and at least we know he can't do the same to any of _us_."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow at her.

Oh, right.

"Snape."

"Yes."

"That… is an issue."

"Yes it is."

"We should do something."

"Indeed."

"…I don't suppose cutting off his arm is an option?"

* * *

"NO! _No._ Definitely not!"

"It's only a forearm, Professor Snape."

" _No!_ "

"It's for your own good."

"No!"

"You can regrow it later…"

" _I SAID NO!_ "

* * *

The instruments whirled and puffed.

Dumbledore was bent over his desk, one hand clasped to his forehead.

"Hermione…" he said. "Do you quite realize what you have done here?"

"What _Sirius and I_ did. With the help of Harry Potter and the Weasley Twins. And the Portrait of a Large Pile of Ash. I mean, not that he helped much, but Ash did seem like he considered himself a part of the plan."

"Hermione," Dumbledore said, " _please_. Be serious about this."

"I can't be Sirius. Sirius can, thought."

"James Potter," Dumbledore said after a deep breath, "made that joke ten years ago, to the letter, and even then it did not make me laugh very much. At the time, however, _James Potter had not cut off the arm of one of his teachers in his sleep._ "

"Forearm," Hermione said in a small voice. "Just the forearm."

She had the sinking feeling Professor Dumbledore wasn't taking her latest scheme in the spirit it was intended.

"Hermione," said Dumbledore, "I hate to lose my temper in front of a student, but _YOU BRUTALLY CUT OFF SEVERUS SNAPE'S FOREARM._ "

"Not brutally," she corrected. "I did that as humanely as possible, I read up on, and practiced, all the charms involved. It was perfectly safe and Professor Snape did not feel a thing."

" _You cut off his forearm!_ "

"So?!" she defended herself, also rising in tone. "He's already brewing up a potion to regrow the bone! I've written Nicolas Flamel, and a bottle of Elixir of Life will arrive tomorrow to do the rest! Please believe me, I thought this _through_!"

Dumbledore had worked himself into quite the tantrum, but these words seem to calm him down somewhat. Somewhat.

"Hermione," he said, "you still cut off an unwilling man's forearm. That is simply _wrong_."

"Alright," she vented, "so maybe it was not the nicest thing, but Professor Snape was just being irrational about it. And it worked! It _worked_! He's free, free of the Dark Mark, for good! Why, I'm sure in two years' time, he'll look back and agree this was for the greater good."

 _This_ perfectly reasonable argument, on the other hand, did not have the soothing effect it was meant to.

"Hermione…" he said in a low rumble. " _Please…_ "

"Please _WHAT?!_ " she shouted.

Some part of her was screaming at her that Dumbledore was obviously bothered by something, and that she was her friend, and that he should be nicer, and that where had her manners gone to, and what would her mother and father think if they could see her right now? But the main part of her spirit was overwhelmed.

" _Please APOLOGIZE?!_ " she continued, glaring at Dumbledore with fury. " _Apologize for HELPING?!_ Oh, it's fine to follow along and-and learn Occlumency and clean up after you and Cornelius, _on top of very demanding schoolwork I'll have you know and I'm busy_ and — and — but the moment, the moment I start taking initiatives _to save the life of an utterly loathsome man YOU want to keep safe_ — then — then I've _overstepped my bounds_ , hm? Sure, I _PREVENTED A BLOODY WAR,_ that's always nice, and manipulating _Malfoy_ 's all fine and good, but if I mess with your — your — your _pet potioneer_ , then oh my! Little Hermione _hasn't been a good girl_! I'm beginning to think-"

" _Miss Granger,_ " Dumbledore rumbled, and suddenly a force snapped her back into her chair against her will, "that will be _quite enough_ from you. It pains me to do this, but, and sorry to engage in irony, _it is for your own good_."

* * *

"D-D-Detention…" she sobbed. "He gave me _detention_. And _lines._ "

"Oi, cheer up, Hermione…" Ron said with a sympathetic smile.

"It's not the end of the world, believe me," Neville offered.

"It happens to everyone sooner or later…" Harry added.

" _Not to me!_ " she continued crying. "Not from _Albus_ … How could this… I was _helping!_ …"

"You've got to admit, Hermione," said Fred.

"Cutting off Snape's hand," George continued, "might have been… er…"

"…a little extreme?" Fred finished.

"Quite, brother mine."

"I concur!" Percy added, walking over, looking concerned. "Miss Granger… Hermione… I've been very lenient with you these past three years. I… will admit that this was mostly because I was often out of my depth with you. But I _do_ draw a line at severed limbs."

" _Won't you lot just shut up!?_ " she screamed suddenly, whirling around.

All her friends of Gryffindor (plus Luna) looked at her with shock.

"I… sorry," Hermione. "Sorry for that… outburst. But, I mean… look… it _worked_! I've found a foolproof to get the Dark Mark off of people! _Doesn't anyone realize how important this is?!_ "

Ron shrugged apologetically. "Er… nno…?"

"Look, detention won't be that bad," Harry said. "Who's it with?"

"Filch…" she groaned.

"Okay, we take it back…" said Fred.

"That is _terrible_ ," George finished.

She smiled weakly.

"Eh, maybe not so much… He can't hurt me too much, we have a little arrangement going on."

"Can't you get out of it altogether?" asked Ron, also looking concerned.

"I _could_ …" she said sadly. "But I don't really want to. Dumbledore would find out, doubtlessly, and it would feel like betraying him, you know? Denying his authority. And I don't want to do that… even if he's wrong on this."

"I think I see what you mean," Luna said sympathetically. "Good luck, then."

* * *

 _M.,_

 _Please cut off your left forearm. Now._

 _H. G._

* * *

 _Lady Granger,_

 _…_ _I'm sorry?_

 _Lucius Malfoy_

* * *

 _M.,_

 _I said cut off your forearm. The one with the D. M. on it. I'm serious._

 _I'll have it regrow in no time, you pansy!_

 _H.G._

* * *

 _Lady Granger,_

 _Surely you cannot be serious. That can't possibly work. I don't believe it._

 _Lucius Malfoy_

* * *

 _M.,_

 _You'd better reconsider, because it does. I've tried it on Prof. S. S. He just regrew it today, no D. M.. He's free. You could be too._

 _Think about it._ _Why_ _wouldn't it work?_

 _H.G._

* * *

 _Lady Granger,_

 _…_ _Are you aware that regrowing limbs is a year-long, extremely expensive process?_

 _Lucius Malfoy_

* * *

 _M.,_

 _Not if you've got Elixir of Life._

 _H.G._

* * *

 _Lady Granger,_

 _…_ _I_ _would_ _ask, but that would probably be pointless. Do forgive me if I put off the deed until you have sent me the Elixir, however._

 _Lucius Malfoy_

* * *

 _Lady Granger,_

 _…_ _It is done. I must admit you spoke the truth._

 _Thank you, I suppose._

 _Lucius Malfoy_

* * *

"So," Filch grumbled from behind his crowded, albeit very clean, desk. "You've come, have you."

"Yes," she said neutrally.

"You know I couldn't keep you here, not really, but you've come," Filch repeated slowly.

"Yes."

"What are you playing at?" he asked suddenly.

"Nothing," she answered, "I just don't want to break the rules today. Also, I suppose I've been somewhat rough on you these past two years, and I thought you could use some help."

"Some _help_?!" Filch huffed. "I don't need your help!"

"You never know," she said with a small helpful smile. "I'm rather good at finding clever new ways to do things."

"I don't need new ways!" Filch said defensively. "Especially not if they're _your_ ways!"

"We shall see."

"Hmf!" growled the caretaker. "Follow me. We've got us a lot of work today."

The old man got up from his chair with a creaking sound, picked up his earthbound broom and headed for the Fourth Floor with Hermione in tow. She, meanwhile, could plainly see in Filch's beady eyes and slumped posture something she had only had an inkling of.

Argus Filch looked _exhausted_.

That was another reason she had accepted her detention.

Neville's outburst in the Forest had helped her realize that she had, indeed, treated a certain number of people as just automata with whom she interacted in preset ways to get through a day. Argus Filch, ever since she'd found out he was a Squib, had been one of those people; just a defanged everyday threat. She hadn't thought of him differently than of an annoying neighbor's dog who'd bark at you helplessly when you went out for a walk. She hadn't paid any mind to his feelings.

Beneath the shabby clothes, mop and scowl, however, Argus Filch was a person, with feelings. And he was very, very tired.

"You shouldn't work yourself so hard, Mr Filch," she remarked sympathetically.

" _Not work so hard!_ " huffed Filch. "D'you want that castle to be clean in the mornin', or not?"

"Do you mean you actually clean the whole castle every day?"

According to _Hogwarts: A History_ , a complete tour of the Castle on foot took at least two days. If Filch really did clean the whole Castle every day…

"You bet I do!" Filch said with an air of wounded pride. "Well, I try, anyway. Sometimes it takes me more like a day'n a half to get through it all. But the main corridors and classrooms, everyday, yes, siree! The passageways too. The Elves ain't got anything on old Argus."

"But that's insane!" she told him whilst beginning to apply Scourging Charms to the suits of armor. "Why don't you just ask the Elves for help? I'm sure they'd be glad—"

"I don't need no 'elp!" Filch protested, angered. "Alright? Just because I don't have any magic or fancy telekinesis don't mean I can't clean the Castle all by myself, and better than a wizard, alright? _Alright_?"

"Mr Filch," she argued, "I know it must be hard being a Squib, but there's no need to go to superhuman lengths to prove yourself. If you do clean the whole Castle on your own, on top of handling discipline you're already doing more work than is even _legal_ in the Muggle world! Be reasonable. You don't have to clean all of Hogwarts _every day_ , that's just insane…"

" _I. Don't. Need. HELP._ " Filch insisted. "And I'll 'ave no more of this talkin'! Here, your fancy charms have done all they could, but see that Vanishing residue there, hm? Now get that mop and scrub that off, alright, the _normal_ way!"

"Fine, fine…" Hermione said. "I'm only trying to help."

Her Saturday of detention had begun at ten in the morning, and it was five hours later that the cleaning pair ran into a message on the wall, written in glittering purple paint.

"Oh, _no_!" Filch wailed, stomping in frustration. "Not again! Ugh! Not enough with the regular crap, they gotta do things like _this_ too! Bet it's the Twins, those two right bastards! Grrr!"

"Please stop insulting my friends," Hermione said off-handedly. "That's not their work, anyway."

Filch began uselessly trailing his wet mop on the wall, but the letters stayed intact, seemingly vanishing the water and soap as it touched them. It looked like Wilkes had gone to no small expense in carrying out the first part of the scheme.

""And just so you don't waste your time," she added helpfully, only barely suppressing a grin, "I don't think that's erasable paint. Except with Basilisk Venom, anyway."

Sprawled in big ornate letters, in a corridor where nearly all of the student body were guaranteed to pass, was the following inscription, taken straight from the note she'd given Douglas:

 _ **The Other** ,_

 _He as Mysterious as he is Powerful,_

 _He the Enemy to Ants,_

 _Doth claim this Castle as his domain,_

 _His to protect,_

 _His to defend,_

 _His to roam._

 _Enemies of the Light, Beware._

 _Oh, and Ants too._


	36. Third Year Finale

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _We're there at last! Funny how each year so far has been much longer than the last. Anyway, here you will see zany schemes play out, papers being written, and Fate getting royally tricked. There is also an element 'missing'; those who notice it ought to know what I mean; worry not, I haven't forgotten. All shall become clear in time. Finally, if you have any thoughts at all, good or bad, about this chapter or this story, I urge you to review; and I reiterate my thanks to all who have Favorited, Reviewed and Followed this story already._

 **Chapter XXXIV: _Third Year Finale_**

Argus Filch did not have many friends, but he made up for it (in the way of communication) by grumbling about his problems to whoever happened to be nearby — an effect that played very nicely in Hermione's little scheme. Before morning, Hogwarts knew of the indelible message on the wall in the Charms Corridor. As Dumbledore was still sulking, and, thus, had neglected to consult Hermione, the faculty wasted considerable amounts of time trying to erase the message or ascertain its provenance. This was perfectly futile, as it was impossible to remove the message without also removing a portion of the wall — and a solemn vow, not exactly magical but binding nonetheless, prevented the Professors from willingly damaging the Castle.

Rumors grew over the next two weeks, ranging from a conservative "The Weasley Twins did it," championed by the Hufflepuffs, to convoluted plots involving the Animated Ape, the Ministry of Magic, and a blood feud between the Goblin King and the Ghost of Sirius Black. News got out, as they inevitably must, and soon the _Quibbler_ contributed their usual toffee-flavored grain of salt, in that they blamed a Conspiracy of Ants.

Now, under most circumstances, Hermione (who, after a few days, had recovered from the lines) would have tried to shut down those rumors, and then had a long, enjoyable, and endlessly frustrating chat with Luna Lovegood on the importance of fact-checking in journalism. Yet this time, all that brainless gossip was actually playing right into her hands, so she let herself be convinced to let it all go; and her inevitable chat with Luna was instead her quizzing the Ravenclaw about how to run a newspaper. (She was making light investigations on behalf of Dobby and Quentin, whose dream of a free _and_ accurate magical paper were fast materializing.)

To try and make amends, she explained her plan in detail to Neville Longbottom, who agreed to keep quiet about it, and told no one else among her friends. It was extremely entertaining watching her various acquaintances' attempts at deciphering the Other's message.

Minerva and Ash, being Portraits, felt a certain kinship to the Castle and thus were generally disapproving of giving it unwanted, threatening tattoos.

The Basilisk, always a bright one, quickly guessed that Hermione was behind it somehow, but told her some disturbing thing about the circumstances of the last time someone had written something like that on the walls of Hogwarts (a sentiment echoed by Hagrid).

Apophis only learned of it through her, but refused to make a guess, being much more interested in the latest improvements to his enchanted armor, which allowed him to fly around, giving the appearance of an eel.

Harry, Maximilian and Ron knew her too well not to guess it was her handiwork somehow, and she didn't tell them otherwise, but she refused to tell them any more, which they accepted in good faith.

Ginny, taking it upon herself to investigate, had somehow traced it all back to Douglas, but she was at a loss at the Slytherin's motivation for investing so much into such an odd message.

When asked about the message in Defence Against the Dark Arts class, Professor Lupin refused to speculate, but launched into a very interesting lecture on permanent magical effects such as those that had obviously been used there. Hermione took a lot of notes, showed them to Douglas, and Douglas asked how on Earth she'd managed to copy _his_ notes from preparing the mission. Lupin really was _good_ at what he did. She thought he would have been a wonderful magical detective if it weren't so convenient for him to work at Hogwarts, what with both his old friend Sirius, _and_ the only living Basilisk (whose Petrificatory services he now shared every full moon with dozens of werewolves from all over Britain), living there as well.

Speaking of Sirius Black, the old Marauder was growing a little jaded with his spectral routine, which drastically limited the number of ways he could prank Snape (ghosts could _not_ cast jinxes). And thus, two weeks to the day after the appearance of the Other's message, he discussed the matter with Hermione over their traditional cup of tea in the Corridor.

"You know, Padfoot," she said once he was done explaining, "I think I may have an idea there."

"I hope you don't mean just stopping the ghostly gig overnight," said Sirius, who was well aware of Hermione's love for supremely straightforward solutions. "I might be bored, but I have my prankering pride. That narrative shall have a thrilling show-stopping conclusion, or my name is not Padfoot."

"Your name _isn't_ Padfoot," Hermione couldn't help but point out. "That's your nickname."

" _Touché_ , but my point still stands."

"I know," she said, "and don't worry, what I have in mind is, in fact, rather interesting. What if we exorcised you?"

"If you made enough of a show of it…" Sirius mused. "Yeah, why not? But who? When? Where?"

"I have a very good idea who," she said, the pieces clicking into place even as she spoke. "Did I happen to mention Douglas Wilkes to you?"

"Well, no," Sirius answered, "not _you_ , but I've seen him around. Tailing people and such. He seems like a decent enough kid, you know, except for being a Slytherin."

"Padfoot, being a Slytherin does not make you evil."

"Oh, really? They spend their time playing littlest-dark-wizard! You can't convince me acting evil all the time won't make them evil at least a _little_ bit."

" _You_ 've spent most of a year pretend to be evil all night long."

"I _did_ say I was getting bored with it, didn't I? Perhaps I'm resisting the temptation and casting off the corruption before I am wholly consumed by Darkness. You never know."

"Oh hush you."

"Also, _I_ don't have a glowering, neck-down-breathing _Snape_ for a Head of House."

"A valid point," she said through her giggle.

"But to the point," Sirius cooled down. "What exactly does Douglas Wilkes, the Allegedly Not Evil Slytherin, have to do with the Extraordinary Exorcism of the Terrible Ghost of Sirius Black?"

"Mr Padfoot, you have a way with words," Hermione complimented. "Well… you must have heard of the message on the wall?"

"Sure," he acquiesced. "That's one throwing Dumbledore out for a loop. That was you?"

"My idea," she answered. "But Douglas carried it out."

Sirius dropped his teaspoon dramatically — then it flew back into his cup like some sort of dragonfly, somewhat undermining the effect.

"Gasp!" he vocalized, putting a hand against his heart. "Macbrains! Are you telling me you've been planning pranks with someone else?"

"Er," she said guiltily, "sort of? I don't know whether it really counts as a prank, because… snap. Sirius, do you know Occlumency?"

"A bit." Sirius shrugged. "I was never really good at it, but Dumbledore had all of us in the Order learn the basics back in the day."

"…Order?"

Hermione was quite confused. The Order of the Junior Marauders had, as far as she knew, been made up on the spot the year prior by Fred and George Weasley; there was no way Sirius had been a member of it, let alone Dumbledore, especially considering Sirius was a _senior_ Marauder, not Junior.

"Ah, you don't know?" Sirius soon cleared up. "The Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore's answer to the Death Eaters, if you will; a sort of secret organization or private army. We dissolved it after the war… never really made it public You know. Just in case."

Sirius glanced in the direction of the Final Chamber that held Voldemort and Quirrell.

"Mind, the important people in the Ministry — Crouch, Bones, Bagnold — they always knew, but the public doesn't. Sorry for not letting you in on this earlier, I told Harry about this earlier, so, er, between that and your friendship with Albus, I thought you knew. …All of us Marauders, Harry's mother, the Prewetts, Moody, we were all members. Even Snape, once he turned on ol'Voldy."

"Huh," Hermione said. "…Well. As you can probably guess, I have, to put forward a conservative estimate, roughly 78 different questions about all of this. _But_ … I think we really should return to our primary topic of conversation, or I'm the first to admit we'll completely lose track and you'll never learn the plan. Which would be a shame, since it's actually a very good plan, if I do say so myself."

"Alright. Shoot."

"Well, if indeed you can Occlude a little, then I can… welllp. I'm an idiot. Right. Secret-Keeper. Bad Hermione! Bad!"

Sirius stared blankly. at her sudden imprecations.

"Er… Hermione? You alright?"

"No! I've just been an utter imbecile!"

"What?"

"Of _course_ you know about the Prophecy."

"Ah yes. Yes I do."

Hermione breathed deeply, calming herself down.

"Right. Right," she said. "Well, I'm trying to loophole it away."

Sirius slowly downed the remainder of his cup of tea.

"…You're sure about this?"

"Uhuh."

"Because remember," Sirius continued slowly, "trying to fight Fate has a tendency to blow up in people's faces. Literally, in You Know Who's case, as I recall."

"I _am_ sure," she said confidently. "Pretty sure. …Let us say reasonably confident. But I _do_ think I'm in the clear. The Turban was trying to _avert_ the Prophecy. I'm working to fulfill it, just in an… unconventional fashion."

"That involves Douglas Wilkes?"

"It does."

"May I ask how?"

"You may. Consider me asked."

" _Oh come on!_ "

"Padfoot! You don't have to bark at me!" she said.

Indeed, Sirius's shouting sounded remarkably like how he barked when in dog form. It was much like how she'd once caught Professor McGonagall _purring_ after eating a particularly good piece of pork pie. The minor ways in which Animagry might affect its users was an interesting topic to research someday, someday when she'd actually have a minute to herself in a 29-hour-long day.

"Really now," she said more calmly, "he _is_ a key part of the plan, as is the Message. I don't want to tell it all to you just yet, though. Try your straight-O's mind on that riddle, hm, would you? It'll give you something else to think about than new ways to prank Snape. Which, while funny, tends to get stale after a while, in my experience. I don't see how you still find it hilarious twenty years later."

"Azkaban," Sirius answered flippantly. "The Dementors took away a lot of my memories of old pranks. I'm pretty sure I've accidentally reinvented a few pranks this year that Snivellus had already suffered through long ago."

"That's horrible."

"Eh, not so much. I try to look at the bright side."

"What bright side?"

"It gives me a reason to keep pranking Snape."

"We're going in circles."

"No," Sirius said with emphasis, " _you_ 're going to Hogwarts, and _I'_ m going to ask you again what the plan is."

"Padfoot," Hermione said with a friendly smirk, "that was a terrible set of puns. And I'm not going to change my mind just because we bantered a bit since the first time you asked."

"You're cruel!"

"No, I'm just a friend," she replied. "But alright, I'll give you a clue or two. I'm building Douglas up — under an alias, of course — as a mysterious force within Hogwarts. Powerful, invisible, hating ants with a passion."

"Why ants?"

"Not telling."

"…Well, I suppose all we have left to do," Sirius thought aloud, "is to plan out the exorcism, then. We don't want it to feel like a rehash of my death scene, nobody likes an inferior sequel."

"True."

"For a start, you must make sure the boy has a good costume, unless you're just making him literally invisible, of course, in which case you've got Prongs — I mean, Harry's cloak… Also, check that he can act alright… though if he's playing some sort of villain, he ought to be a natural, what with being a Slytherin… ah."

Sirius's smile had suddenly disappeared from his face.

"What is it?"

"That Douglas Wilkes…" Sirius said with hesitation. "I… I was there when his father died. That won't be a problem, will it?"

"Why would it be?" she asked. "That you were with Mr Wilkes till the end, it's touching, really, I don't see how—"

"No, no," Sirius interrupted her, looking pained, "you don't understand. Orson Wilkes was a Death Eater. He was killed in battle. By Moony. In front of me."

"…Oh."

* * *

"Don't worry, miss!" Douglas reassured her the next day. "I'm very professional. And even then, I never knew my father."

"You're an orphan?"

"I think my mother would beg to differ, miss."

"Oh, right."

"Wonderful woman, my mother. You should meet her some time."

* * *

 _Dear Quentin and Dobby,_

 _The news you bring concerning our project of a newspaper are very encouraging. Since you can't seem to figure out a title, might I suggest"The Other Paper"? We are aiming to be 'the other paper' compared to the "Prophet", after all; and I have certain interests that would be well-served if you called it that, I'll explain later._

 _Also, if you are as ready to print the first issue as you imply, then I may have a scoop to start it with. I suggest you, Dobby, come to Hogwarts on Friday, the 24th of June, in the morning. I cannot tell you just what will happen, but it'll be spectacular. Do bring a camera._

 _Your friend,_

 _Hermione_

* * *

 ** _THE OTHER PAPER_**

 _Issue One - Saturday, the 24th of June, 1994_

 ** _EDITORIAL_**

 _My every brabule is shimmering as I write down those words that I hope may go down in History._

 _I do not presume to know how many of Wizarding Britain's population — or, dare I hope, of the magical world at large — shall have picked up this first issue of 'The Other Paper'; but however many you may be, this humble editor can only thank you from the bottom of his rachis for reading his work, and congratulate him for looking farther than everyday routine and accepting another newspaper than the 'Daily Prophet'._

 _While we are on the matter of the 'Prophet', at which some of you may recall that I was once illegally employ: our purpose is not to_ replace _the Prophet. Rather, we mean to give it healthy competition. The more scholarly among our readers are surely familiar with the concept: no single source should be trusted with informing an entire nation, lest it fall prey to the temptation of altering facts, knowing no one stands to correct them if they do. Truly, we do not accuse the Prophet of having yet committed such a crime, but the possibility is there, was there._

 _Much like the 'Prophet', the 'Other Paper' shall strive to inform the people of the Wizarding World of noteworthy news, and, on occasions, educate them about issues of general culture as back features. We shall have reports, we shall have interviews, we shall have essays. We shall even have comics, in time; any aspiring cartoonists, and, for that matter, any who'd wish to join our writing staff, be they wizards or otherwise, are invited to write us, our address being 12, Gagwilde Lane, Hogsmeade._

 _Our major difference with the 'Prophet' shall be that, in order to grant us the time to check our facts, and to gather enough stories to fill an issue without resorting to sensationalism, our schedule will be weekly as opposed to daily. Expect a new 'Other Paper' every Saturday from this day forth. You may purchase copies of any issue at the aforementioned address, or write us at the same to subscribe to the 'Other Paper'._

 _Again I thank you for taking the time to buy and read this issue,_

 _Quentin the Quick-Quotes Quill_

 ** _EXTRAORDINARY EXORCISM OF A PERPLEXING PHANTOM_**

 _By Quentin and Dobby_

 _Our colleagues of the 'Daily Prophet' documented it all wen, on last Halloween, a dread phantom made an appearance in the Great Hall: a chain-rattling, eyes-a-glowing apparition who claimed to be the shade of the infamous Sirius Black, whom the 'Prophet' had earlier reported had blown himself to smithereens in that same Hall just a year ago. (See in Page 3 our summary of the life, death, and lingering mysteries of Sirius Black.)_

 _Today, it falls to the 'Other Paper' to report the third, and, it seems, final, installment in the postmortem adventures of Black._

 _As reported by a respected (although not well-liked) member of Hogwarts faculty, the noted Potioneer, Professor Severus Snape, in our interview Page 4, the Terrible Ghost of Sirius Black had taken to causing mischievous, murder-free mayhem in the halls of Hogwarts in the months since Halloween. At 8 a.m., as the Hogwarts students tucked into their breakfast, the Terrible Ghost materialized by the Head Table, intent on bothering Prof. Snape in some new and obnoxious way. His plans to somehow use a dead cod and fishing rod to inconvenience Prof. Snape remained unfulfilled, however, as the Ghost was suddenly flown backwards into the wall, somehow hitting it in spite of his ectoplasmic condition._

 _Black then collapsed to the floor, as if struck down by some curse, twitching in apparent agony (see animated picture on page 2). Crackles of green light were clearly visible around the Terrible Ghost's face and hands. A booming voice was then heard, seemingly coming from the very walls of the Castle. It stated:_

 _'_ _HEAR, HOGWARTS! I AM THE OTHER! I HAVE CLAIMED THIS CASTLE! AND THOU, SIRIUS BLACK, HAST ALLIED THYSELF WITH ANTS; THUS SHALL I STRIKE THEE DOWN AS AN ANT! BEGONE!'_

 _The confused among you, who, I presume, make up a large portion of our readership by this point, are invited to refer themselves to our summary of previous sightings and reports of the magical intelligence known as The Other in Castle Hogwarts, on Page 4._

 _The Terrible Ghost wailed his innocence, still thrashing on the ground, becoming less and less visible by the instant; he was, at that point, surrounded by billowing green mists, yet it was plainly visible that his spectral body was unraveling. As only the head was left of the Terrible Ghost, he finally confessed to his kinship with the ants, and most of all with one Ant Lord, Either._

 _Once the Terrible Ghost of Sirius Black had been fully exorcised, and the last of the mists had finally dissipated, the voice of The Other once again resounded:_

 _'_ _THEREFORE SHALL I SEEK OUT YON ANT LORD, AND DESTROY HIM!'_

 _Lightning rained down from the Hogwarts Great Hall's enchanting ceiling, for all that the weather outside was clear; and for the briefest moments, several students report that they caught glimpses of the outline of a tall, skeletal, cape-wearing being pacing through the Hall, the presumed physical from of The Other. Finally, a stone was magically lifted from the floor of the Hall, revealing a small colony of ants. Each ant was then raised in an orb of green energy by the power of The Other, questioned by the booming voice, and, when it failed to reply, obliterated in a flash. At last, the very last ant was levitated, and The Other said:_

 _'_ _AH! TIS YOU, MINE SWORN ENEMY, THE ANT LORD! DIE BY MINE HAND, EITHER, AND NEVER AGAIN THREATEN THIS CASTLE WITH YOUR LOATHSOME ANTSINESS!'_

 _A clawed, gloved hand, as large as a Troll's and as long-fingered as a Dementor's, became visible around the so-called 'Ant Lord' and crushed him with a noise that will haunt the nightmares of all present, a noise that must surely have been magically enhanced in some fashion._

 _'_ _JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED,' came the ehcoing last words of The Other, which faded into silence as the puzzling presence receded._

 _It goes without saying that few will miss the Terrible Ghost of Sirius Black in Hogwarts, least of all Prof. Snape. Hogwarts, according to spokeswoman Prof. McGonagall, already has its hands full in the supernatural troublemaking department, with the well-known Poltergeist Peeves and a large host of Ghosts. The parents among you needn't worry; dramatic though our account may have sounded, Prof. Dumbledore and the Heads of House of Hogwarts assured our reporter, Mr Dobby, that a lecture was given to the children to make sure they did not come to be frightened of The Other._

 _The Other itself remains a mystery, but it is clear that, whatever it is, it fancies itself a protector of Hogwarts, and is only hostile to Ants. We shall keep our readers informed, in future issues, of any outstanding theories concerning its nature._

* * *

 _ **THE QUIBBLER**_

 _Issue 6790.5 + 3/4_

 _The 30th of June, 1994_

 ** _THE OTHER A DISGUISED STUBBY BOARDMAN?_**

 ** _Musical Conspiracy Revealed_**

 _Also, On Page 4: IS YOUR COUCH A LIVE CROCODILE? 4 FOOLPROOF WAYS TO FIND OUT!_

* * *

"Why Darling," Sally Granger said, "I must say, I didn't expect you to come back with Hogwarts with not one, but _two_ pets. Ooh, they're awfully cute, aren't they? …You can't talk to them, can you?"

"No, mom, don't worry," Hermione winked, "they're just pet. And yes, they're little darlings, the both of them, aren't they? And they get along well together."

"They didn't cost you too much, did they?" her more grounded father asked.

"Oh, no," she said, "they didn't cost me a thing, Dad. And even then, I can support myself, now, to an extent… I have shares of a newspaper, _and_ a pet Dark Wizard millionaire."

"I am… going to pretend I didn't hear that," said Mrs Granger, "for the sake of the moment."

"Yes, for the moment," Mr Granger nodded. "I definitely will be asking about this."

His wife shot him a glare.

"…Later on, Sally dear, I did mean later on."

"And in the meantime," Mrs Granger asked, "what are those two darlings' names?"

"The turtle is called Earl Gray," she explained, petting the grey little reptile, "there's a funny story behind that, I'll tell you later."

"And the hamster?"

"Neither."

"Really?" said her mother, surprised. "That's a rather odd name. How about…"

"No, no, it _must_ be Neither. I know it's a little strange, but… ah, I'll explain it to you at some point, but it takes some context to understand."

Hermione mentally reviewed her year at Hogwarts as she watched her mother pick up Neither the Hamster, gifted to her by Douglas Wilkes, the Other.

"Rather a lot of context."


	37. Summer Interlude III

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _I'm back! And with a somewhat longer Interlude than the previous ones. A true chapter should be coming soon. As always, I hope you enjoy all of this nonsense, and don't hesitate to review, even if it's not for a compliment! Feedback is any artist's bread and butter!_

 **Summer Interlude III: Return to Privet Drive**

It was the thirteenth of July, and Petunia Dursley was enjoying a nice afternoon of reading magazines and generally lazing about. Her darling Vernon had finally succeeded — as she knew he would — in trapping the Freak's infernal reptile inside a basket, and so the boy could once again take care of the cooking and household chores, giving her ample free time.

With Harry upstairs, doing the laundry, she wasn't even scared to answer the door when she heard a knock. Perhaps it was Mrs Figg, come to chat about her delightful cat. Or the milkman. Or an encyclopedia salesman. At any rate, someone refreshingly normal.

She put on her friendliest smile and opened the door.

It was a young girl.

This wasn't entirely to Petunia's liking, because Petunia had no idea why a young girl would be visiting her. An unexpected young girl visitor was _odd_. Not freakish, thankfully, no — but odd.

Still, she seemed normal enough, although she badly needed a hairbrush. She wore a nice blue dress, stood in a very proper fashion; she was neither ugly nor _too_ attractive.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Dursley. I'm sorry to bother you…"

Oh, look how sweetly she smiled. There was probably a very innocent, very normal reason she had—

"…but I am here about your nephew Harry."

—oh.

"My… nephew…?" she said through clenched teeth. "What nephew?"

"Harry. Harry James Potter."

"Oh!" she forced a smile. "… _That_ nephew. Of course. …How… how do you know him?"

"We go to school together," the girl answered. "In fact, I'm surprised he didn't mention me. I'm one of his best friends. My name is Hermione Granger."

Oh, now that was just brilliant. Another freak, right on her own doorstep! At least she didn't _look_ freakish, hair aside. If she could only prevent her from _acting_ freakish, perhaps the neighbors wouldn't suspect anything.

"…I see," she said in a low voice. "Er, do come in."

"Why thank you!" the girl-freak said, and she obligingly followed her into the parlor.

"Alright," Petunia said harshly once the door was closed and they were both inside. "What do you _freak_ want with the _Freak_?!"

"You know," the girl observed nonchalantly, and she was _sitting down in Vernon's armchair, how dare she_ , "you really shouldn't call both Harry and I 'freaks'. In cases such as, well, this sentence, it rather obscures the meaning, don't you think?"

"…What?"

"What I mean is, if you really _must_ insult our unusual quality, then you could find specific monikers for both of us. Use synonyms and metaphors. You used to be a secretary, as I recall — surely you know your way with words."

"Wh… whu…"

"For instance, you might call me a _heathen_ or a _Lilith_ , whereas you would refer to Harry as an _abomnation_ or a _mutant_. Naturally, if you're willing, something more offensive could be unearthed, but we are both well-educated, polite people, are we not?"

" _STOP BEING FREAKISH, FREAK!"_ Petunia burst out. " _WHAT DO THE FREAKING FREAKS WANT WITH US NOW!?_ "

"You see, _this_ is _precisely_ what I was talking about. Oh well. My point is, you should stop acting like Harry is your personal manservant. He is, in fact, your underage ward, which is a completely different thing. Again, if you have to make him work as a servant and housekeeper, then by law, you must pay him a fitting wage. Although you would then run afoul of British law in another way, inasmuch as it forbids—"

Petunia Dursley's day had gone from quiet and pleasant to an utter nightmare in seconds. Here was this _freak_ who didn't even have the _decency_ to nod meekly when it was put back in its place — who didn't even _argue_ — instead that girl was… was… well, really, Petunia had no idea what she was _doing_ , but it was _horribly abnormal_ for a teenage girl to do.

"WHAT. DO. YOU. WANT."

"Mrs Dursley, do you consider yourself a housewife?" the impertinent girl asked out of the blue.

"A perfectly normal housewife, yes," she said with offended pride, "which is more than you can ever hope to be."

"You _will_ agree that normal housewives are known for their outstanding housekeeping?"

"Of course," she said, perplexed. "I was reading this month's issue of _Outstanding Housekeeping_ when you—"

"Well then, what sort of _normal housewife_ are you to be lazing about, and letting a _boy_ do _your_ housework? Do you realize how _ab_ normal, indeed how _freakish_ , you are being as a housewife?"

"I—"

" _Also_ , what _normal_ guardians ever made their wards do all the housework, hm? I am not asking you to love him, or care for him in any meaningful manner; I do realize that is quite beyond you; but what you have been doing borders on illegal. As does keeping a blue krait in a locked waste basket, for the record."

"But— but— he's a _freak!_ "

"I suppose you would consider a mentally dis — I mean a _lunatic_ — to be a freak as well?"

"I… well, yes, of course–"

"In that case, you really should keep in mind that much as one might dislike them, harassing the mentally disturbed is absolutely not normal. Mentally disturbed people are put into asylums and left alone, not worked about like beasts of burden."

"But nobody _knows!_ "

"They could know very quickly, if I set my mind to it."

" _I don't believe you!_ "

"How sure are you?"

Petunia was at a loss for words.

"I'm not asking _much_. Just _do_ your _own_ cleaning and cooking _yourself_ and don't bother Harry. He can entertain himself and make himself quiet. We have put a spell of invisibility on his owl, if it worries you; that's how he contacted me, for the record; he won't threaten your reputation."

"But… but…"

"If you don't do this _normal decent thing_ , I will personally hypnotize all your neighbors into thinking they saw you dancing about the garden with green makeup. In your underwear."

" _You wouldn't dare!_ "

"Why wouldn't I? As you've so eloquently said yourself, I'm a _freak_. I'm the _leader_ of the freaks, as it happens."

"Their _leader_ is a _little girl_?! They must be _crazy_!"

"Oh, quite crazy, yes. But really now. _Will you do it?_ "

"I— I—" she stammered, reluctant to admit defeat — "but you'd have to convince Vernon, and Dudley, as well, I can't—"

"Oh, I've already talked to both of them."

"What? _When_?!"

"Just now."

With perfect timing, just as the girl walked up the stairs (presumably to tell the boy the 'good news'), Vernon and Dudley burst out of their office and kitchen, respectively.

"YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED!" the two male Dursleys said in unison.

Petunia swallowed nervously.

…Oh dear.

Fainting wasn't _too_ unusual, was it?

* * *

"Okay, Hermione, but how did you talk to all of them at _once_?!"

"Hint: it begins with a T, it breaks the laws of physics, and I wear it around my neck."


	38. A Meeting

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _It's Fourth Year, featuring the Order of the Phoenix, Tsh the Snake, and… Mr White? Wait, who's that? Let me check my notes… Credit for the concept of Mr White goes to a certain tumblr thread. You'll know the one, if you've seen it, by the end of this chapter. As always, please review!_

 **Chapter XXXV: _A Meeting_**

Harry and Hermione's summers both came to an unexpected end a few days before the actual start of term: Hermione received a succinct letter from Professor McGonagall calling her to Hogwarts on Dumbledore's behalf, and Harry soon phoned her to tell her the same thing had happened to him.

Though Hermione suggested popping by at the Fudges' and using their Floo, her parents — eager, perhaps, to do _some_ sort of conventional parenting — drove her all the way to Hogwarts, taking the opportunity to see some of the sights in the area. She found her friend aimlessly pacing around the iron gate where the wizarding bus service he'd located had dropped him. It was exceedingly obvious that, having never arrived at Hogwarts on foot, he hadn't the faintest idea how to get in. He voiced this concerned as soon as they'd exchanged greetings.

"Well obviously," Hermione explained, making an effort not to sound condescending and only half succeeding, "you ought to call for Hagrid. He _is_ the Keeper of the Keys."

"Oh, _that_ 's what it means!" Harry said in understanding.

That was really an ever-endearing thing with Harry: he would rarely think to better his knowledge himself, but if you pointed something out to him, he'd take it with no complaints, and, indeed, be sincerely thankful for it."

"…And how _do_ you call for Hagrid?" he asked then. "I don't think he'd hear us from here, his house is kind of far away."

"Well, obviously, you do it like this," Hermione said, reaching for Hogwart's large and rusty dragon-shaped doorbell. "Haven't you read _Hogwarts: A History_?"

"Welll…"

"Now that's funny," she said pointedly, "I seem to recall loaning it to you for this summer. And don't go and say the Dursleys stopped you from reading it, I _did_ personally travel to Surrey just to take care of that problem."

"I know, Hermione, I know," Harry apologized, "I just don't like reading —"

Hermione's eyes shot daggers.

"— quite as _much_ as _you_ do," he rapidly finished. "I read a bit of it, but I'm only at page 180 or so. After thirty pages or so at a time, I start getting bored, you know?"

She knew quite well, because it seemed this sort of attitude to reading was the most common among "normal people": a sort of lukewarm tolerance. She was quite sad that her friend turned out to be like that, but she could understand it. The only people she knew who read as lengthily and wantonly as she did were her mother, Professor Dumbledore, her second cousin Thomas whom she'd only met twice… perhaps Tsh, relatively speaking… and Maximilian, of course — but he didn't really count, because he could willingly, literally suppress the part of his human brain that produced boredom.

Soon they saw Professor Hagrid amble towards the gates from inside, turn one of the large keys he carried inside the equally massive keyhole, and pulled the doors apart.

"Hello, Harry, 'Mione!" the friendly giant said. "Good teh see yeh two again. Oh, and who's that in yer pocket, Hermione! Why ain't he a cutie!?"

Poking his muzzle out of Hermione's side pocket was a little snake, curiously tasting the air of Hogwarts.

"Er, yeah, who's that?" Harry asked as well.

"That's Tsh," she introduced. "He and his family live in my neighborhood. Tsh is my star pupil I wrote you about, Harry — the one who can read English, and understand it!"

{ _Yes!_ } Tsh boasted. { _I understand Human-Speak! I'm a Reverse-Speaker, yes I am! Although, I can't Speak Human. I try, but it doesn't work with my mouth. But I understand it!_ }

{ _That's amazing!_ } Harry said, and similar praise was heard from Hagrid in English.

Tsh sniffed the air some more and made another statement in Parseltongue.

"He says you smell strange and interesting," Harry translated for Hagrid's benefit. "Like a whole lot of animals at once."

"Hohoh!" Hagrid chuckled, petting Tsh with a finger. "Well that ain't so surprisin', is it, conside'rin my job, huh? …But come on, ah'd love teh stay'n chat, but we don't want to keep Professor Dumbledore waitin', now. Follow me."

They followed the bearded titan, not to the Headmaster's Office, surprisingly enough, but simply to the Great Hall. The Hall looked little like it did in the year: the House-Elves had removed all but the Head Table, which stood, magically enlarged, in the centre of the large and empty room. No candles, even unlit, floated by; the enchanted ceiling wasn't functioning, either; instead two lonely chandeliers hung from a plain stone ceiling.

Hermione looked round, startled; she could have sworn she heard a moaning sound. But there was no one in sight.

Huh.

She turned her attention back to the Table, at which there sat many unfamiliar people, in the company of many familiar ones. Dumbledore, wearing one of his more outrageous outfits, was presiding.

"Aaah!" the Headmaster greeted the three newcomers. "Harry… Hermione… Rubeus… Come, have a sweet."

"Doesn't he mean a _seat_?" Harry whispered in Hermione's direction.

"No, he doesn't," Hermione answered, amused. "You don't know him as well as I do. The sitting part is implicit; what he really wants is make you taste some new confectionary he's dug up."

"Quite so, my dear, quite so," the keen-eared Dumbledore confirmed. "Now, I'm sure you two are wondering what is going on."

"Well," Hermione said thoughtfully, "yes, although I do suppose it must have something to do with the Order of the Phoenix…"

"And how on Earth," growled Mad-Eye Moody, who was sitting next to Hagrid, "did you come to _that_ interesting conclusion, girl?"

"Nothing inappropriate, I promise," she cleared up, "merely, it seems the only plausible reason to gather Professor Snape, Harry Potter and Mr Weasley at the same table."

"Hah!" Moody barked a laugh. "You _are_ clever!"

"Well, yes," Dumbledore confirmed, "this is indeed the first formal gathering of the Order of the Phoenix since 1983. With Bartemius Crouch Junior at large, it seemed wise for us to regroup."

"Ah yes…" said an old man with a flamboyant top hat. "Nasty business, that… very nasty."

"And you want us oto be a part of it?" Harry asked, direct.

"We do not _want_ ," Dumbledore corrected, "to place such a burden on your shoulders; and because of your… circumstances… it seems inevitable that you _shall_ be a part of this one way or another. As for you, Hermione, with all due respect, I am quite convinced that you _would_ find some way to hijack our plans should I lock you, as they say, out of the loop."

"No need to apologize for knowing me well," Hermione replied with a smug grin.

"Really, Albus," Arthur Weasley argued, "is this really necessary? I don't mean to doubt the children's abilities, but—"

"They are teenagers, as a matter of fact," Dumbledore cut him off, "but no, I am not overestimating Miss Granger in the least. It is my belief, based on copious personal experience, that even if we were to place a Fidelius Charm on the Order, she would yet find some way to drop in for tea by next Tuesday."

"If you say so, I'll believe that," Moody said, "but can we _trust_ those two?"

"My dear Alastor, if we _cannot_ trust Hermione Granger, then we are already doomed."

"…Fair enough."

"So," Hermione said decisively. "Let us get down to business. What do you have to tell us?"

"A great many things," Dumbledore answered, pulling out a scroll from out of the immense pockets of his mauve robes. "Firstly, to let you all know that Lord Voldemort has been incapacitated for good, and is kept unconscious and powerless in a well-guarded location. Unless Crouch Junior is better-informed than I am led to believe, that dark chapter of Britain's History can be closed once and for all — and in no small parts thanks to the efforts of us all, I am proud to say."

Though some of Dumbledore's closest acquaintances had obviously already been told, there was still an explosion of cheers all over the table.

"To make sure he is properly guarded is a task I may ask some of you to carry out in the future," Dumbledore concluded. "Next item… ah yes. It surfaced a little while ago that Sirius Black is, in fact, neither guilty…"

Already a few gasps.

"…nor, indeed, dead."

In a grand sweeping motion, Dumbledore pulled the Cloak of Invisibility off a chair on which Sirius stood in practiced victorious pose.

"Hullo."

Before the other Order members could properly process these news, there was a high-pitched scream. Heads turned and were treated to the sight of Snape, who had leaped away so fast as to knock over his chair, and was now apparently trying (and failing) to climb out of Hogwarts through an arrow hole half his width.

"Now, now, Sevvy, aren't you happy to see me?"

"AAAAAH!"

"See, I expected you might say that," Sirius said, calmly walking towards the panicking potioneer, "which is why—"

"AAAAAH!"

"—I prepared this. The Marauder's Herbal Brew of Ultimate Serenity. Calming Draught, Dreamless Sleep and Cheering Solution all rolled into one, with a light dash of Veritaserum to tie it all together."

"AAA-"

Snape's screams were cut off as he was forcibly fed a spoonful of Ultimate Serenity Brew. He swallowed and immediately fell off the wall on his back, his entire body limp, sucked clean of all energy and nerve.

"What… is… this… abomination…" Snape said in an incredibly relaxed-sounding drawl.

"Now, now, Snapey, don't you recognize old friends anymore?"

"No…" Snape said slowly, resisting, with every fibre of his being, his sudden urge to smile widely and hum a tune. "This… potion… it… is… an… _insult_ … to… the… _Art_ …"

"And your face is an insult to any sane man's sense of esthetic. Nobody's perfect."

"Mixing… potions… so… It's… is…it… it is as… if… you… put… _honey_ … on a _pork pie_ … and sprinkled… milk…"

" _I_ tasted a pork pie like that once! Wasn't too bad, neither," a little man with a cockney accent said, but he was quickly silenced.

"Sirius," Dumbledore chided, "I distinctly recall your promising you wouldn't prank my poor Potions Master today."

"A prank?" Sirius repeated. "Where? I am only helping a dear colleague rest his nerves, to the best of my abilities. What do you say, Sevvy, am I not just mothering you like a hen?"

"Just… leave me… alone… and… let… me… _die_ …" Snape mumbled, almost choking as he held in his impulse to whistle in the sunshine and pet a unicorn.

"…Yes, well," Dumbledore said briskly, returning to his seat after giving the two thirty-year-old schoolboys a heavy look, "we have an order of business to attend to. …Sirius, do stop laughing at what you've done, and tell us what truly happened, starting with the Fidelius."

Obediently, Sirius recounted the bizarre series of events that had ended with him being exorcised by a Sltyerhing second-year two months prior — stealing amused glances at Snape all throughout the tale.

"I told you the rat was the traitor! I _told_ you!" Moody said victoriously.

"Alastor," Emmeline Vance rebuffed him, "that hardly counts. You accused _all_ of us of being the traitor in rapid succession, as soon as you heard there _was_ a traitor."

"And I had a _good case_ for all of us! _Me included!_ "

"Enough with the past!" Professor Lupin demanded. "We're here to plan for the _future_."

"Right," Sirius concurred. "If we don't catch Wormtail, and even if we wanted to I don't know how we'd find him… then Sirius Black will have to stay guilty, and dead, in the eyes of the D.M.L.E. I don't see how I could do much for the Order that way… except guard Voldy as I've already been doing, but I'm honestly bored out of my skull of _that_."

"Yer in luck, punk," Moody said with a faint grin. "I happen to have a foolproof disguise on me."

"Happen, he says," whispered an amused Emmeline to Hermione. "Mad-Eye always has one of _everything_ on hand. I once asked him for a veeblefetzer on a lark, _and he asked me what color and size I wanted it._ "

"Very well," said Dumbledore, "Alastor, let us see it."

Hermione observed with acute interest as the famous Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody rose from his chair. He took off his hair, which was actually a wig, and untransfigured it back into a large box. He cast a Sound Shield around himself and spoke three different passwords, then dispelled the shield and cast several safety charms on the box. Finally, he unlocked the lid, with a key he kept in his left boot, opened the trunk, and climbed inside it. He came back out five minutes later, holding a small metal strongbox. He gave it to Sirius:

"Right. Well, you open that yourself, sonnyboy. I don't _think_ anyone's boobytrapped it, but I'm going to err on the bit of caution on that one. Combination is 1E4 799 1BB and 2/4."

Harry and Hermione had difficulty holding in their laughter by that point, though all the other attendants were apparently used enough to it that they watched with just the barest hint of amusement showing.

Even when Sirius opened the strongbox and pulled out a false beard and glasses.

"Huh. This is… thank you, Mad-Eye."

"Don't mention it," Moody said proudly. "Made this myself. Absolutely undetectable by magical means."

"Well I do _hope_ so!" Sirius Black chuckled, putting on the glasses and beard.

"And don't forget the finishing touch!" the older Order member added; he somehow produced a slightly battered top hat from behind his back, and placed in on Sirius's head, artfully askew. "Right. Your own mother wouldn't know ya."

"Oh, she's already proclaimed time and time again she no longer knows me," Sirius assured the man.

"Stop gettin' smart with me! I'm helping you here!"

"So you are," Sirius said with satisfaction, watching his reflection on the smooth marble floor of Hogwarts. "Hmhm. Don't I look amazing! But then, I always do, don't I?… Well, my dear fellow Phoenix enthusiasts, allow me to introduce your latest member…"

Sirius left the tension hang for a moment.

"…Jester White. Absolutely no relations to Sirius Black."

Hermione again heard a moan. She double-checked the ceiling, but this time it most definitely did _not_ come from the chandeliers — rather, it was Snape, who was slowly coming to from the Herbal Tea's effect."

"…Who?"

"Why hello!" White offered Snape a handshake. "And who might you be? My name's Jester White! I'm your colleague now!"

"Sirius Black," moaned Snape, burying his face in his hands, "will no force on this sinful Earth ever blow your chaos away from my _life_?"

"Who is this Sirius Black?" asked White. "He sounds handsome."

"True, but not the point," Remus Lupin chided in. "If you're looking for Sirius—"

"Oh, I'd never _dream_ of going out and _looking_ for him!"

"—if you're looking for Sirius, he just left. This is Jester White."

" _No_ , that is Sirius Black with _glasses_."

"Now, Severus," Dedalus Diggle played along, "that doesn't make any sense. Sirius Black doesn't wear glasses."

"Have him take _off_ those ridiculous glasses, then!"

"He can't, he needs them to see."

"GHH!"

* * *

Once Snape realized even Dumbledore seemed in on the masquerade, he slouched into his chair, utterly defeated, only speaking when spoken to for the rest of the meeting, which was less eventful.

First, the Headmaster summed up what was known about Barty Crouch Jr., his actions and his possible targets — including the parts the Ministry didn't know about, such as his getting into Hogwarts once. Hermione reassured everyone that with Snape and Apophis's Marks both carved off, this would stay a one-time happenstance.)

The biggest surprise of that portion of the meeting was the latest item on Crouch's list of crimes. It turned out he'd tried to break into Privet Drive, as witnessed by Order Member Arabella Figg. (The idea of that Figg woman being an Order Member seemed to have Harry quite bewildered, which he promised to explain when the meeting was done.) Fortunately, the magical protections placed on the Dursley house by Dumbledore held, dealing the villain severe burns the moment he stepped on the grounds. Nonetheless, it was still grounds for Dumbledore to reinforce the protection of Harry during the summer; Moody, Hestia Jones and Diggle volunteered to take turns patrolling the neighborhood, and both Harry and Hedwig were given emergency Portkeys to Hogwarts by Dumbledore.

"You don't have to do this, you know," Harry tried to argue, "I don't want to be a bother…"

"Son," Moody said, "would you rather be a bother, or _dead_?"

"Er…"

Hermione glared at him.

{ _Harry, don't answer that._ }

{ _Girl,_ } Moody hissed back, { _stop assuming you can get past me. I happen to know all the languages a Dark Wizard is likely to speak. And then some._ }

That he had gone and learned Parseltongue was a point in Moody's favor for Hermione, though his reasoning for doing so wasn't.

Dumbledore then discussed the Horcruxes, which he'd been researching in his spare time. He had a few ideas of where some might be, and what they might look like; all were informed to be on the lookout for them.

Afterwards, a more practical sort of worry: where to meet next, once Hogwarts came to be overcrowded with students again for ten months.

"I have an idea," said Jester White. "I happen to own a property I'm not too keen on using. Lovely place, if you like dark and gloomy. Very inconspicuous, too, inasmuch as a mansion can be inconspicuous, that is."

"And that would be…?" Lupin asked.

"Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place."

" _That is the ancestral Black family home_ ," Snape shouted. "Are you even _trying_?!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said White. "I do believe the place used to belong to a certain Mr Stern Black, or something — but I'm quite sure that man's dead. It was put up for lottery and I had the good luck of winning it. End of lovely story. _Any questions?_ "

Snape was still fuming, but refrained from stirring up trouble.

Finally, the meeting came to an end. Lupin took the opportunity to tell everyone present that he would soon be going on a trip to the Americas with the Great Basilisk to promote the Safe Petrification of Werewolves overseas, and thus could not act as Defence Professor and Order Member for a while.

"Oh, must you really go?" Harry asked sadly. "You _were_ our best Defence Professor… my favorite Professor in general if I'm being honest."

"I'm afraid that's a given," answered the soon-to-be-former Professor. "Defence Professors who try to overstay their one-year welcome at Hogwarts tend to meet a grisly fate, as a rule."

"How come?" Harry asked.

"That would be," Hermione explained, "because Lord Voldemort once applied for the position, Dumbledore threw him out on account of _being the Merlinforsaken Dark Lord_ , and that big baby got so mad about it he cursed the position on his way out."

"That is a rather cavalier way to put it," Dumbledore said, brows knit. "That curse has taken many an innocent Professor's life over the years."

"So has the Turban himself," she said, "and you don't seem to be against belittling him. Still, I confess I feel a little ashamed I didn't think to investigate the Curse this year. I was just so busy. Well, let's hope leaving Hogwarts on your own accord will be enough… It did work for Professor Max, so there's that."

"And who do you have in mind for my replacement?" Lupin asked Dumbledore.

"Oh, I have someone very special in mind…" the Headmaster answered, mysterious.


	39. Another Adventure

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Hello there, folks! This chapter was actually supposed to include the first Defence class, but I got lost in writing the Forest scene and when I next checked my word counter I was already over 3k. This means the next chapter is already mostly planned out, which means you'll get it pretty soon! Lucky you! As usual, thanks to all reviewers, favoriters and followers — and for all of you who haven't yet, don't forget to review!_

 **Chapter XXXVI: _Another Adventure_**

With just three days remaining before the 1st of September, Hermione, Harry, Hedwig and Tsh were allowed to stay at Hogwarts. A couple of House-Elves were dispatched to the Granger and Dursley homes to collect the two's personal effects.

On Friday Harry and Hedwig kept to themselves, peacefully enjoying the quiet beauty of the deserted Hogwarts grounds. Hermione had often noticed Harry's affinity for untamed nature, forests and lakes — if she wasn't mistaken, it was one of the things he had in common with Neville Longbottom, one of the reasons those two had bonded. She, meanwhile, was much too busy showing Tsh around and introducing him to everyone she knew at Hogwarts, from Minerva to the Portrait of a Large Pile of Ash (who had slowly been growing more coherent, it seemed).

After translating Tsh's replies to English began getting cumbersome, she also wrote down to research some way to create a translation spell. She'd been meaning to try her hand at spellcrafting ever since she'd read the late Pandora Lovegood's book _Making Magic - A Beginner's Handbook to Spell Creation_ , and if Muggles could create machine-assisted _written_ translations, and wizards could create insubstantial magical voice-boxes (as with Portraits)… there had to be _something_ there. She was actually rather upset she was only thinking of this _now_ , when term was just about to start, rather than two months earlier. She would have discussed this with Dumbledore, who, from what she'd seen, had stopped pouting about the Incident with Snape's Arm, but the Headmaster, being Headmaster, was rather busy just a few days before term started. Paperwork and scheduling and all that boring sludge.

* * *

On Saturday, while Hedwig was off having flying fun on her own and Harry practiced his flying on the empty Quidditch pitch, she finally showed Tsh the one room she had overlooked the previous day.

{ _Tsh, I give you… the Library of Hogwarts._ }

{ _Ooooh!_ }

{ _Silence!_ } said a voice.

Hermione's head whirled around. There was that oversized and underfed vulture, Irma Pince, bony and sour, eying them with a pair of gleaming yellow irises.

"Madam Pince!" Hermione said in English. "It's a… pleasure to see _you_ again. You… you speak Parseltongue."

"I do not," the old witch replied bitingly, "but I know how demand silence in every tongue known to wizardkind."

"Truly, Madam!" she argued, "Parseltongue is widely believed to be the least noisy form of speech on Earth, as documented by Mauritius Carneiro's _Grammatica Magica_. Were I to discourse in Mermish, _then_ I suppose you would have a case, but—"

"SILENCE!"

"Alright, _why_?!"

"You'll wake up the card catalogue!" Pince hissed through clenched teeth.

Of all the answers Hermione had considered the librarian might give, 'You'll wake up the card catalogue' was not one of them. It was not only that card catalogues rarely figured on lists of things someone might accidentally wake up. It was mostly that, but not exclusively.

It was also that she was unaware that the Library of Hogwarts _had_ a card catalogue.

"There's a card catalogue?" Hermione thus whispered, inquisitive.

"Of _course_ there's a card catalogue!" the tall woman answered with a glare. "This is a Library, isn't it?"

"I don't mean to know your Library better than you do—"

" _I do hope so!_ "

"—but in the three years I've been a regular visitor here, I have _never_ seen the barest hint of a card catalogue. In all honesty, I just assumed wizards did not have card catalogues in their libraries, and that was it."

"I see," Pince said more calmly. "Well, Rupert is rather shy, poor dear."

"The card catalogue is called Rupert?"

"That is what I implied, yes."

"Am I to take it that the card catalogue is sentient?"

"If you wish to further your understanding of the truth, then yes."

Hermione swallowed, blinked, gave a small nod and then walked away from Madam Pince, who, in turn, returned to her desk where she resumed her usual statuesque stillness.

{ _I have but one question,_ } Tsh said once they were out of Madam Pince's hearing range.

{ _Yes?_ }

{ _What is a… I cannot say it. A thing as you were discussing?_ }

{ _A_ "card catalogue" _?_ }

{ _Yes._ }

{ _Oh, well this ought to interest you. I would translate it as a, hm, a Collection of Cards._ }

{ _Oh. Does the Library Keeper like to gamble?_ }

Hermione chuckled. She _had_ told Tsh about _cards_ before, but only when she was explaining gambling to them. His sister Sss seemed interested in poker. Regardless of her species, Hermione had a feeling Sss would have belonged in Slytherin if a Sorting Hat her size could be found.

{ _No. You see, Libraries are very large, and so…_ }

* * *

On Sunday, Harry convinced (well, the phrase is 'convinced', but it did not take much convincing) Hermione to join him in visiting Alastair. During the Order of the Phoenix Meeting, Dumbledore had shown his two new members how to send a vocal message through a Patronus Charm, and Harry used this to notify Alastair of their arrival, so that he could meet them on the edge of the Forest, sparing them a long and dangerous trek into Acromantula territory.

Acromantulas do not usually possess clocks, and as a result the two mages arrived early at the set meeting point — or else Alastair was late, but they both preferred to say they were early and he was right on time, because neither teen wanted to heap more trouble on Alastair's shell than the poor boy already had.

As soon as he emerged from the darkness of the Forest, the two noticed the Acromantula was looking much worse than the last time Hermione had seen him. Some of the cracks in his shell looked _new._ There was something odd about his left mandible, as though it was out of line with the other one — Harry was strongly reminded of a dislocated shoulder, and winced sympathetically, which made Hermione question how Harry knew firsthand what a dislocated shoulder felt like. And the fur on his sides was patchy and scarce, as if it had been pulled apart. Alastair stood weakly, and was limping on his third left leg.

"Alastair!" Harry said concernedly. "What _happened_ to you?"

"N-Nothing…" Alastair recoiled.

"Well, _something_ obviously happened," Hermione said impatiently. "Just tell us."

"You can trust us," Harry said in a softer, kinder voice. "We're your friends."

"I…" Alastair began, but then his dislocated mandible contracted and he stopped talking.

"Alastair, we've got to get you to Hagrid," Harry decided.

"Thank - you," whimpered the Acromantula.

"Do you think you can walk there?" Hermione asked.

"I… don't know…"

"Alright, we'll help you."

Awkwardly, Harry and Hermione took hold of either side of the giant spider's unbalanced shell, trying to help him support himself. Slow but steady, they took a step forward, and his legs clumsily followed.

"You must tell us," Hermione insisted. "What happened? Who did this to you?"

"Was it a Centaur?" Harry said.

"…No…" breathed Alastair. "Argog… Orga… Marchog… My brothers, sisters…"

"When?"

"Some, long ago… But most… today… they saw me, you… your message… Wanted to… do not… approve…"

"I understand," Hermione stopped him from hurting himself by continuing. "We'll get you some help now, and — you can't come back there, we won't let you —"

" _Won't you?_ " came a voice, a hissing, distorted female voice. " _What gives you the… authority… to decide such a thing?_ "

The three friends stopped dead in their tracks, and the humans turned round to see another Acromantula, larger and bulkier than Alastair, who had emerged from the darkness behind them.

"Orga!…" yelped Alastair.

Letting go of Alastair's shell, who slumped back in response, Harry gripped his wand and took a defensive stance.

"What do you want?"

" _What we want? Many things…_ " said Orga's terrible voice. " _Vengeance… the freedom of Mother… and your flesh, of course._ "

"We don't _have_ your precious mother, idiot!" Hermione retorted. "And you shouldn't be threatening us, or your brother. We are wizards, and we have wands."

" _Hmm,_ " the girl spider 'snorted', insofar as a demon-voiced spider could snort. " _You speak of wands… hah. It is not an advantage… you will keep… forever. We grow… strong. But for now… still… you cannot use your wands now._ "

"And why would that be?" Harry asked, defiant.

" _Because of this —!_ "

With no warning, Orga leaped forward while _spitting_ some sort of white substance. Before he could process what was happening, a thread of white silk had coiled around Harry's wand, snatching it from his grasp. Before he could react, the Acromantula had _snapped_ the wand between her strong mandibles and spat another white tendril at him. His Quidditch-honed reflexes finally kicking in, he jumped aside, but his ankle was still caught by the spider's improvised lasso, making him fall to the ground.

"AH!"

Hermione jumped as well, catching Harry's hand with her left. She tried to pull Harry away from the spider, but Orga's hold was strong.

" _Help!_ " Hermione squeaked, turning to Alastair.

The other Acromantula shakily stepped towards his sister, pincers forward in uncertainty.

"Grab him! _Help me!_ " Hermione ordered once she realized he had no idea what to do to help.

" _Hah! You feel clever, enlisting the… help… of a cripple!_ " Orga mocked her efforts

But Alastair too could weave silk. A second tendril of silver-colored rope shot out and clung to Harry's left hand. With all the strength he could muster, Alastair then helped Hermione drag Harry away from Orga, who was now struggling to keep her grip.

" _Baaah!_ " Orga roared in frustration.

Something _gave_ and, his leg free from Orga's hold, Harry went flying in the opposite direction, landing against poor Alastair.

"Oww!"

"Sorry, mate—"

" _Now!_ " Hermione said, pointing her wand at Orga. "I'm sorry, but — _Arania Exumai!_ "

The white fireball of thecurse that Professor Lupin had taught them the previous year burst out of her wand and collided with Orga's cephalothorax, eliciting a shriek of pain. She fell on her side, but soon regained her balance and shot another rope of silk, which hit Alastair's front right leg instead. The spider boy effortlessly snapped it with his right pincer.

" _You!_ " shrieked Orga, charging towards Hermione.

Losing her cool, Hermione stumbled backwards, dropping her wand. She rolled away just in time to avoid a stab from Orga's frighteningly spear-like leg, but this put her wand too far from her reach.

" _Hah!_ "

But the now-free Harry took his chance. He grabbed Hermione's wand, and cast a second Spider-Banishing Curse at the Acromantula, a stronger, more focused one, which left a visible dent in her carapace.

" _Hgggh!_ " she clenched her mandibles in pain.

"Call for help!" Hermione urgently told Harry. "Use the Patronus!"

While Harry put some distance between him and Orga and cast his magnificent stag Patronus, Hermione tried to locate the broken halves of Harry's wand on the ground — perhaps it could yet be repaired — but they were nowhere in sight, lost among the twigs and leaves of the forest floor.

" _And what do you think you're doing?!_ " said Orga, and to her horror, the crouching girl realized the Acromantula was now standing _over_ her, fangs glistening.

" _STOP_!" Alastair yelled, lurching at his larger sibling, but without even moving, Orga _kicked_ him with her hind legs, sending him tumbling to the side.

Hermione's heart was beating like never before. She'd been in a situation just like this two years ago, her rational side tried to tell her, and she'd survived, and Harry was calling for help, and it would all be okay, but — but — at the end of the day, she was a quivering mammal without a wand, and a giant man-eating spider was standing over her, savoring its victory, and all she could feel was _fear_. It was swelling within her, rising, going out of control, and — and —

 _BANG!_

A white explosion, quite like a Spider-Banishing Curse, somehow burst from her hands, knocking the Acromantula off of her.

Just at this moment, Professor Dumbledore appeared in a burst of flames, wand out. Harry, still holding Hermione's wand, ran to his side from wherever he'd called him.

"What is happening here?"

"I — I — I —" Hermione stammered.

" _You_ are _speechless_?" Dumbledore blinked. "This must be more serious than I thought. Where… ah. This is our antagonist, I believe."

Orga was lying on her back, pincers and mandibles twitching.

" _Hss…_ "

"Well, I see I came in too late after all," Dumbledore observed, admirative. "Once term starts, you must remind me to award twenty points to Gryffindor, for handling yourselves in the face of danger. Hm. Now watch — I could do this wordlessly, but a demonstration never hurts — _Incarcerus!_ "

As a result of the Headmaster's magnificently-cast Incarcerous Spell, thick ropes appeared out of thin air, tying up Orga where she stood.

" _I will eat you!_ " growled the Acromantula. " _I will devour you… and feast… on your…_ **innards!** _Even you,_ **brother** _! Hrrrargh!_ "

"Now, now, temper, temper, my girl," Dumbledore said sternly. "What is it with the women of your line? Your mother, too, never stops grouching. Well, she will have someone to listen to her, now, I suppose."

"… _You would take me to her?_ "

"To the place she is held, yes," said the Headmaster, "unless you'd rather I turned you over to the Ministry of Magic."

" _No!_ "

"Very well," he said. "Then I must away… unless there is something else I must do?"

"Actually, yes," Hermione answered. "Alastair needs some patching up…"

Seemingly noticing him for the first time, Dumbledore looked over Alastair's wounds.

"Dear me, so he does…" he said. "Such barbarians are this colony. My word. I shall take this boy to Rubeus at once."

Dumbledore took a deep breath, placed a hand on Alastair's mangled carapace, and Disapparated. He returned after a moment, _sans_ Alastair.

"There," he announced, "this is that taken care of. Anything else you would ask of me?"

"Maybe," Harry answered. "Neither of us know the Summoning Charm yet, so, huh, I kinda lost my wand in the fight… if you could help us…"

"Certainly."

Wordlessly, carelessly, Dumbledore waved his wand in a half-circle, and the two bits of Harry's wand came flying into his open palm.

"Oh dear," Dumbledore whispered when he realized what had happened.

"Is it… possible to fix a broken wand?" Hermione asked, hopeful.

"That is normally considered beyond the ability of all but the very greatest," Dumbledore replied darkly.

"Oh." Harry said, resigned.

"But then again, I do happen to be one of the very greatest, they say," Dumbledore continued. "You should keep this a secret, of course — if it were known that I can do this, not only would people constantly pester me with it, I would put poor Garrick out of business — but… _Reparo._ "

And to Harry's wonder, the two halves of his beloved wand were rejoined; there was a golden flash and it was good as new.

"Thank you, Professor! Thank you so much!"

"My pleasure! Now run along. There is no telling who or what else could be lurking in those woods. Hermione, when I have more time, I will want to have a talk with you, but… not now. …I shall see to it that Rubeus keeps both of you informed of young Alastair's health. Good bye!"

And he disappeared.

{ _…Quite a character, isn't he?_ } Tsh commented, only now daring to come out of Hermione's pocket — he was kind, but not particularly brave.

{ _Oh, you have no idea,_ } Harry and Hermione answered in unison.

* * *

Word came from Hagrid in the evening that Alastair would recover in time, but, for now, was to stay by his half-Giant grandfather's side and rest. Reassured, Hermione finished her letters to the Minister, to Lucius Malfoy, to Quentin and Dobby, and to her parents; and then, being quite tired, she gave up on waiting and went to beds. Tsh comfortably settled in the drawer of her bedside table.

In the morning, the others students had arrived; she and Harry found their other friends, and told them about their adventure.

"Wow…" said Ron. "I… I should have been here. Sorry."

"No, no," Harry reassured his friend, clasping his shoulder. "Don't blame yourself, I'm happy for you that you weren't there. Too many spiders."

"…Guess so."

" _I_ could have helped, though," Ginny said.

"I don't doubt it, Ginny!" Harry answered. "I hear you can cast a mean jinx or two."

"Fred and George told you that, didn't they?" Ginny said, amused. "Not that they're wrong."

"Say," Hermione asked, "Harry and I weren't at the Feast — we went to bed early, of course — so, erm, did Albus tell you who the new Defence Professor was? He was ever so mysterious about it."

"Ah…" Ginny said slowly. "Well, _yes…_ "

"We didn't see him, mind you," said Maximilian. "But he did tell us who it was."

"This is gonna be a surprise…" Neville said.

"…it's Grindelwald," Ron finished, blunt.

Heh. Heh. Heh. She must have misheard that.

"… _WHO?_ "

"Grindelwald," Ron repeated, "the Dark Wizard Grindelwald. You know. The bloke everyone was petrified of, back before the Turban came along and stole his thunder."

" _HAS ALBUS LOST HIS MIND?_ "

"Wow," said George, "calm down! This isn't so bad."

"Right," added Fred. "This _is_ still better than a moron possessed by You Know Who, isn't it? And at least we _know_ he's here from the start. He's not in disguise or anything."

"Yeah," said George. "Could be he's not actually scheming anything at all."

"Though we doubt it," Fred continued.

"Plus," George added, "he wouldn't even be our most obviously evil Defence Professor to date, you know."

"How so?!" asked an incredulous Hermione, driving her fork deeper and deeper into her sausage rather than eating it. "How could he _possibly_ — this _man_ LITERALLY CAUSED _WORLD WAR TWO_!"

"…Yeah, I guess," Fred said, dismissive, "but, I mean…"

"Yes?"

"…he's not Count Dracula."

"Eh?"

"I mean, you have to give him _that,_ " Fred argued. "He's not _Dracula_."

"So wait," Hermione said, putting her fork down. "Is this just all hypothetical Marauder lunacy, or did Hogwarts once hire _Count Dracula_ as its Defence Professor?!"

"Yep," one of the Twins' classmates answered for them. "Well, he was in disguise, of cours…"

"…but somehow," George finished, "I feel like we should all have looked deeper into Professor 'Vladimir Alucard', his 'wine intolerance' and his 'rare skin condition'."

Hermione stared blankly at the Sixth-Years.

"…You know, sometimes I worry for this planet."


	40. Professor Grindelwald

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Yup, when I said "expect the next update soon", it actually meant "literally the next day". I'm as surprised as you are, but there you have it. One thing to note: I have done what I could to make this portrayal of Grindelwald FB-accurate, including some eye-related hocus-pocus to fit movie and book canon together, and most importantly, trying to extrapolate how he would sound from his brief appearance at the end of the picture. Naturally, this is all guesswork; if it turns out, once "The Crimes of Grindelwald" premiers, that I was really off in an easily-fixed way, expect me to come back and edit this chapter and any other scenes I may write before then with Grindelwald in them. …Alright, that's about it. In the meantime, enjoy, and do review, fave, follow and all that!_

 **Chapter XXXVII: _Professor Grindelwald_**

It was not without apprehension that the Gryffindor Fourth-Years entered the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, their first core class on Monday (following an elective period, filled with Divination for Harry and Ron, Muggle Studies for Maximilian, and both of these for Hermione).

To Hermione's vaguely relieved surprise, there was no Hitler lookalike standing by the teacher's desk; instead there was a curious brass device sitting next to it, looking more or less like an oversized and antiquated film projector. The moment all the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs had sat down, the machine activated. Wheels rolled, chains whirred, sparks of silver and gold flew up; and the next minute the form of a man hovered above the machine, transparent and shimmering, yet somehow still more lifelike than a ghost. The whole thing very much resembled what some confused Muggle sometimes thought holograms were like.

The man himself — Gellert Grindelwald — was old and skinny. With hair so long, a face so bony, and his mustache shaved off, Hermione could barely recognize the former war leader as she'd seen him in history books. His eyes, still those mesmerizing different shades of blue, looked down upon the stunned students.

"Ah…" he spoke, his voice as clear as if he'd truly been just a few feet from them. "Good morning."

He seemed to wait for answer, but found only wide, vaguely frightened stares.

"Hm. You fear me."

More silence.

"Heh. As you well should," he continued with bitter amusement. "But at present is this fear… unfounded. I could not hurt you, young mages, even if I meant to. This —" he gestured to his hovering form, "— is nothing but an illusion, an image. I am still in Nurmengard, seeing you through the same device you see me. I have no wand…"

With infinite contempt, he twirled the wooden stick he had been holding.

"…this is but a twig, plain wood, to use for demonstration. There is no sinister plot — I am here to teach you. And that is all."

"Why?" Hermione asked, breaking the silence. "Why would you want to teach us?"

"I could say many beautiful things," Grindelwald answered with a wry smile, "but in all honesty… because it's something to do. Even if I should have no taste for education, and I do, I would still take this occupation over sitting in a cell and listening with rapt attention to the ticking of my watch. That 'favor' Albus asked of me was really no favor at all from _me_ — rather, _he_ did _me_ one."

"Oh."

"And what are your names, all of you?" asked the Professor. "I see Harry Potter among you… but the rest, I must admit—"

"Seriously, you don't know her?" said a bubbly Hufflepuff girl — Hannah Abbott. "That's _Hermione Granger!_ "

"Indeed?" said Grindelwald with obvious interest. "So it's you. Albus Dumbledore has written about you."

Hermione blushed and smiled, her confusion and anger concerning Grindelwald fading.

"I don't know if I should feel validated or get mad and asked what he wrote."

"Well,—" began Grindelwald, but he hadn't been counting on Hermione's curiosity.

"Also, Albus writes you, then?" she cut him off. "How often? Is he alone in this? Does anyone check the letters? Are they encrypted? Do you have an owl? Is it imprisoned too?"

"Easy now, Miss Granger!" chuckled Grindelwald. "That is enough talk about me. I have looked my own soul face to face these fifty years, and have found that it's not actually as interesting as one would think. I am here to teach you defensive magic, not my personal details. Or would you rather I was some Gilderoy Lockhart type?"

"You read Gilderoy Lockhart?"

"At a time when I was very bored and very desperate… yes," Grindelwald said, with the same contrite air one would imagine he'd take if forced to discuss his old crimes. "Again though, we stray from our topic, hm? Defensive magic. But where to start?"

"Professor Max taught us a lot about fighting creatures… sir…" said a Hufflepuff girl. "And Professor Lupin too, though he was a bit more general. Maybe you could show us some mage-on-mage dueling? You're supposed to be, like, _really_ good at dueling, right?"

"A quick and practical idea, student," said Professor Grindelwald. "I like it. Hm. This seems like a time to try the Points system that you have here in England. Who are you then?"

"Helen Monroe, sir," answered the girl. "I'm a Hufflepuff."

"Monroe?" Grindelwald noted. "Of the line of Dorian Monroe, perhaps?"

"My great-great-grandfather, sir," Helen said with pride. "He told me _all_ about you."

"Ah… he _would_ ," the former Dark Wizard said oddly. "Well! It is Five Points to Hufflepuff."

Grindelwald paused. Elsewhere five grains of yellow sand had been displaced inside the Points Hourglasses, but as always with Points, there was no other effect.

"This was underwhelming," commented the old man. "Hm. Well! Let is pur your idea into practice, young Monroe. Let me see. Ah… is there a Quidditch seeker among us tonight?"

Eyes turned to Harry. For once, he didn't seem to mind; _that_ fame was all his own.

"Indeed, young Potter?" said Grindelwald, admirative. "And aren't you quite the _touche-à-tout_? Hm. Come to the front, would you? And ready your wand. …Good. And now, who has the highest marks in the room, say?"

This time, obviously, it was Hermione's turn to be the centre of attention.

"Ah! Of course. Well, you heard, Miss Granger. Come up now — yes — and let's see you duel Mr Potter."

"But — she's my friend!" Harry objected.

"All the better," Grindelwald cut him off, didactic. "Dueling must not be rooted in _hate_. Hatred helps the casting of some curses, yes, but it floods the mind, drowns reason. Anger destroys your _focus_. Do you understand?"

Some of the students nodded meekly.

" _Well then take notes, dummerheads!_ " snapped the Professor. "Now, as I was saying, for the pure beauty of the form, there are no better duelists than two friends. It reduces fear, anger and other interferences to a minimum; and yet it remains _competition_. For that last reason, note, lovers usually make poor duelists. Either too gentle, or too… _passionate_. Things get ugly. …You and the girls are not lovers, are you, Mr Potter?"

"What? No!"

"Ah, good. Now listen well," Grindelwald told the two of them, "first you will bow to each other. Like this. Graceful, but firm."

The projection showed them a Duelist's Bow.

"Then take your opening stance, firm on your feet, ready to cast. Like so."

Though the lower parts of his legs were blurred, being on the very edge of the projection's range, Grindelwald still demonstrated that move.

"The trick, of course," he explained, "is to grip your wand in a way that will favor your opening spell. At the same time, you must try to guess you're opponent's intent from _their_ grip, hm? It's all very… the word is _crafty_ , I think."

Hermione nodded appreciatively; but she also heard frightened Hufflepuffs whispering that this sounded very Slytherin indeed. Which didn't bode well considering who they were talking about in the first place.

"Well then. Begin!"

Nervously, Harry and Hermione bowed their bows and gripped their wands and took their stances. Hermione wanted to start with a Shield Charm. That was a simple vertical movement, so she steeled her arm to avoid any wavering and, not wanting to be obvious, pointed it straight a head; she would lower it quickly and then immediately raise it back as she cast.

Harry's wand was pointing to his right, slightly above shoulder level; the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like her friend was borrowing a page from her own book and intended to hit her with a Full Body-Bind Curse. Well, she had the advantage, then, because _Protego_ was quicker to cast and could easily withstanding even an optimally-cast Body-Bind. Silly Harry.

The tension held for barely four seconds; then the silence was broken by Harry's shout of " _Petrifi_ —"

" _Protego!_ "

Startled by the massive spherical shield's appearance, Harry interrupted his spell; the bluish-white magic building at the end of his wand fizzled out. Instead he yelled:

" _Stupefy!_ "

The large red bolt slammed into her Shield, nearly collapsing it. She held it together, barely.

" _Stupefy!_ " Harry cast again, and the shield broke. Fortunately, what remained of that Stunning Spell was barely enough to make Hermione shiver a little when it hit her.

" _Expelliarmus!_ " she cast at Harry, who dodged it.

" _Expelliarmus!_ " he cast back, and her wand was ripped out of her hand.

Harry caught the wand in his left hand and stood there, a wand in each hand, smiling as he savored his victory.

But she wouldn't give up so easily.

She walked to him and offered her hand to shake.

Harry gathered his two wands in his left hand to shake hers with his right—

And she punched him.

Both wands came rolling out of Harry's hands; Hermione grabbed them and held them up high.

"I claim victory!" she said as fast as she could.

"Well done!" Grindelwald immediately congratulated her, clapping even though no one else did.

"Hey! No fair!" Harry complained, massaging his nose. "I won _before_ you, Hermione!"

"Actually, no you didn't," she corrected him. "You didn't claim your victory, and I didn't admit defeat. The duel was still going! Harry, all I have to say is, you should read more. Here, there's your wand."

"Heh! Heh! Heh!" chuckled the spectre of Grindelwald. "Very good, very good. Amateurish, of course — how could it not be? — but impressive. Mr Potter, I'm sure someone in this class knows basic Healing, for your nose… If not, you have my permission to go see the nurse, naturally."

Hermione went back to her seat while Harry was, indeed, put back together, by Hannah Abbott as it happened.

"Well then! Well then!" said Grindelwald. "Let me now break all this down, what was wrong and what was right. Ah…"

The Professor was contemplative for an instant, replaying his memories of the duel in his mind.

"Hermione Granger," he said, "was in the lead from the start. Harry Potter's Curse was well-cast, to be sure, but you really should have feinted as she did, my boy."

"You didn't say—!" Harry protested.

"You should have guessed, then," Grindelwald cut down his argument. "Duelling takes _brains_. That is not to say, Miss Granger, that _your_ tactics were flawless."

She gasped.

"Opening with a Shield Charm is… not wrong, but clumsy," the teacher explained, "if you are not certain of your opponent's next spell. As you know, certain curses, cast with enough strength, will shatter a Shield on the first try."

"That's true," she argued, "but Harry doesn't know any of these. I'm quite certain the curses you're thinking of are all quite Dark."

"Are they now?" Grindelwald said with clear surprise.

He pondered silently for a moment.

"Huh. You're right," he granted. "Well, that's not all, anyway. A spherical Shield was far from ideal; you were both static, with limited options to move, thus you only had to worry about frontal attacks. A vertical Shield would have been perfectly sufficient, and it would have been more compact. Stronger. It may have held longer than yours did."

Hermione committed this advice to memory.

"Speaking of which," said Grindelwald, turning to Harry. "Those were impressive Stunners you cast. Powerful. Very powerful. You will go far if you learn to use your head."

"Say now!" Hermione complained. "I think my Disarming Charm was more than appropriate, too!"

"So it was…" Grindelwald granted. "Appropriate, that is the word. You have the skill. But not the talent. _He_ has both."

"But… but…"

"I will have no egotistical, straw-grasping defences, miss Granger!" Grindelwald said, harsh and cutting. "A truly great mage — a truly great man — knows and accepts his failings and limitations. It was my weakness, and Albus's strength. You must learn to do the same."

They hurt, those words.

But she knew they were true.

She nodded, mollified, and went back to sit at her desk for the equally enlightening remainder of the lesson.

* * *

"Maximilian! _Finally_ I've found you alone. We haven't really talked this week — how was your summer?"

"Ah, er, well…" the Boggart hesitated.

"I've never really asked, have I?" Hermione thought aloud. "Where _do_ you even spend the summer? I don't believe you own a house of any description…"

"Ah, hrm…" Maximilian answered, looking pained. "You know… everywhere and nowhere…"

* * *

Maximilian's confusing non-answers were still swirling about her head on Wednesday afternoon, when she headed up to the Headmaster's Office (which, after a Tuesday evening spent looking for it, she had tracked down to just right of a broom cupboard on the eighth floor). She couldn't figure out why someone she considered her friend would lie to her, especially in so inescapably unconvincing a fashion as that. Her leading theory was that Maximilian, despite his prevailing human side, still liked to sleep in Filch's dusty old drawers, and he didn't want to admit it.

She was broken out of her reverie by the Bored Boar's mumbled: " _'kay, c'min…_ ". Up the spiral stairwell she went. And there was Albus Dumbledore, engulfed in the reading of… huh, that wasn't a wizarding book.

"A physics book, my dear," Dumbledore said genially, looking up from the small pocketbook. " _A Brief History of Time_ , by one Mr Hawking. Somewhat out of my usual range of interests, but someone mentioned the other day the Muggles had finally figured out that the planet Pluto exists,—"

"Er, they've known that for over sixty years."

"—and so I decided I was long overdue to update my knowledge of their science. As it turns out, they seem to have passed Wizarding Astronomy by, already, as far as the theory is concerned. Truly fascinating. I would never have guessed the true nature of the Black Holes, not in a million years."

"Albus," Hermione began, "I could not agree more that cosmology can be fascinating and that wizards should be more in touch with the Muggle world."

"Couldn't you now?" said the cheerful Headmaster. "Well! I say this calls for a celebratory sweet or two! Here, I've been dying to test out a new brand created just this years by some Muggle brand whose name I forget. 'Starburst Jelly Beans', they are called. I—"

" _However_ ," said Hermione. "I consider it a more pressing concern to know why you _went and hired Gellert Merlin-damn Grindelwald_ as a _schoolteacher_."

"Temper temper, Hermione," Dumbledore said pleasantly. "And do stop antagonizing your poor old headmaster. Not only is it needlessly hurtful, nothing could possibly cross me today. I am feeling inordinately joyful."

Her face deadpan, Hermione picked up one of the Jelly Beans Dumbledore was offering, dropped it to the floor and stomped on it. She stared expectantly at Dumbledore.

"You," he said, still smiling beatifically, "have accomplished nothing, except remind me that I should stop wording statements as if they were challenges when I'm around you."

Hermione crossed her arms, pouting but defeated.

"Ugh!" she said. "It's impossible to stay angry at you when you're like this."

"Yes, that is more or less the idea."

"Still, my point still stands," she insisted, "if more quietly. Why you would allow that man into your school I cannot puzzle out. Wasn't he your archnemesis? Not to mention, er, a literal Nazi?"

"Dear me," Dumbledore said with a bitter smile, "you cannot go around conflating Gellert with his Muggle puppets. He'll get terribly upset."

" _Puppets?_ " she asked, incredulous.

"Yes…" he explained. "Dear me, you have not studied Gellert's strategies much at all, have you? That strikes me as uncharacteristic of you, Hermione, I must say. He caused the Muggles' war to bring chaos and ease his own conquest later on… and thus he did back up the Muggle dictatures — but he saw it as driving his enemy against itself. Nothing more. You really should tell me what books gave you the impression that—"

" _That makes it worse!_ " she cut him off. "The Nazis were _puppets_? The Holocaust was all just a _ploy_ to this man!? How does that make anything _better!?_ "

"That…" Dumbledore paused. "That is a way to look at the matter that had not occurred to me. Thank you."

"Finally something reasonable from you tonight!"

"But this does not change one thing," the sorcerer said, grave. "We must forgive. You must, as I have. Gellert Grindelwald is not — never was — Tom Riddle. His intentions, buried so deeply beneath his crimes, were always virtuous. And today he is a changed man."

"Oh, _really_."

"Truly he is," Dumbledore repeated. "I have written him every month these forty-nine years, and every month he has replied; I have observed, as enemy, as warden, as friend, the long meanderings of his mind and soul over those years. First denial of his defeat… then depression and cynicism… then something better, greater. Something human. Something powerful. _Remorse_. Half a century is a long time, Hermione…"

For the second time that day, Hermione suddenly felt, very keenly, that she'd been wrong about something.

It still wasn't a pleasant feeling.

"…You're right," she said. "It's just… hard to accept, you understand. I don't know how wizards think of it. But for Muggles, World War II is always seen as… as the epitome of cruelty and madness and just plain human _evil_. To think the man at the heart of it all is even remotely redeemable… it's hard to swallow, you know?"

"Yet weren't you the one who advocated clemency for Voldemort?" Dumbledore said, eyebrows raised. "Surely you better understand my reaction then, for it was exactly the same as yours at this time, for precisely the same reasons."

Hermione forced a chuckle. She wasn't feeling at all elated, but the irony _was_ biting, and social rules demanded she acknowledge it.

"Speaking of Tom," said Dumbledore, regaining his smile, "I have some excellent news."

Hermione was acutely aware that he was changing the subject very much on purpose, but she was too curious about the Turban to object.

"Yes?"

"We have," he announced, "located a Horcrux."


	41. The Locket

**AUTHOR'S NOTE** : _Hello again! Thanks for all the great reviews! See, when I'm motivated like that, you get these updates faster than a beeping roadrunner. So, er, you know the drill — keep 'em coming! With regards to the last chapter, it may interest you to know that I did my research, and Starburst Jelly Beans were, in fact, created in 1994. As for this one, you will see that a certain plan is left hanging at the end — aside from regular reviews, I'd be very interested what you all can come up with of what the plan might be! Alright, on with the show._

 **Chapter XXXVIII: _The Locket_**

Professor Albus Dumbledore seemed like a giddy kid opening a Christmas present as he withdrew a golden locket, emblazoned with a green " _S_ ", from one of his desk's numerous drawers.

"Hermione, I present to you — the Locket of Salazar Slytherin."

Hermione watched in silent amazement, but the Headmaster portraits on the walls ooh-ed and aah-ed. And a snort came from the Sorting Hat's shelf.

"Huh? Eh? What? What?"

"What is it, Hat?" Hermione asked.

"Did someone mention Slytherin's Locket just now?" the Hat asked, its interest piqued.

"Why yes, old chap!" Dumbledore said, proudly holding up the object in question. "We have it here even now!"

"Well, well, well!" The Hat smiled. "I'd nearly forgotten about that old thing… And where on Earth did even you find it? Professor Slytherin brought it along when he stormed off to parts unknown, as I recall… I haven't seen it since."

"How it came to be there, I do not know," answered Dumbledore, "but we stumbled upon it in the Black Collection as we were cleaning it all up."

" _Cleaning up the Black Collection_?!" the Sorting Hat repeated, in shock. "And why — how — _why_ are you cleaning up the Black Collection, of all things?"

"Well, the last owner, one Mr Jester White, has granted the Order of the Phoenix leave to dwell in the mansion at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. And we Phoenix devotees were unwilling to sleep above the most dangerous assortment of dark artifacts ever gathered under one roof, as I'm sure you will understand."

"Yes, yes…" the Hat said. "Although it seems like a rather daunting task nonetheless… Hm. I trust you know what its powers are? Or has even that slipped through the cracks of history?"

"I'm afraid," Hermione said, "that it has. Even Professor Bagshot could not say what Slytherin's Locket's purpose was, in _Hogwarts: A History_."

"That is true as far as academic fact is concerned," Dumbledore nuanced, "but I do have a few theories. Theories I cannot test, however, my poor old Hat, for as I was telling Miss Granger, the Locket was corrupted by Tom Riddle many years ago."

"Don't tell me—!"

"Yes," he told the Sorting Hat. "It is a Horcrux."

"Oh no… oh no!… Ah, the little blaggard!…"

"Not so little, I should say," Dumbledore corrected. "In fact, I believe he grew up to be quite tall."

"But how did you find out it was a Horcrux?" asked Hermione.

"I did not," admitted the Headmaster, "not I. Alastor did. With his expertise in Defence Against the Dark Arts, it seemed appropriate to ask him — him and Jester — to take care of the Black Collection. Being Alastor, he tried every detection spell he knew on every bauble — he spent the last two days going through only one closet! But a spell for detecting Horcruxes was among those his… savviness made him use, and there we have it. A shard of the Dark Lord's soul, in our custody."

"Alright," Hermione said, practical. "So with the Diary, I just stuck it in the Third-Floor Corridor, because who cares about the Turban's old diary? But if Slytherin's Locket is important to you, Hat—" (The Sorting Hat vigorously nodded, insofar as a Hat could nod.) "—then I think we ought to see if we can get him _out_ of the Locket and return it to its regular use. It was very thoughtless of Voldemort, wasting a powerful object like that just as a container for his soul, don't you think? Quite rude indeed."

"My dear!" Dumbledore quirked an eyebrow. "You underestimate the Horcrux Curse. I know of no way to release an object from the hold of a soul-shard, no way at all. To unmake a Horcrux, one must destroy the object."

"Don't!" begged the Hat.

"But I don't want to _destroy_ the Horcrux, necessarily," said Hermione (which seemed to reassure the Sorting Hat somewhat). "I just want to _separate_ the bit of Voldemort from the vessel, keeping both intact. Can't that be done, really?"

"Under normal circumstances, I would say no," Dumbledore said after giving the matter some thought. "However, I have found that the likelihood of something being possible often turns out to be directly proportionate to how determined _you_ are to make it happen. Thus, at this point, I will make no predictions."

"That's a lot of faith you put in her," the Sorting Hat noted.

"Do you think it misplaced?" asked the sorcerer.

"I didn't say that!…"

"Hat, how do you open this?" Hermione asked abruptly.

She'd been fiddling with the Locket on Dumbledore's desk, and could find no way to open it. No small knob, no minuscule keyhole, nothing. The locking mechanism had to be magical.

"Why would _he_ know?" asked Dumbledore, confused.

"Because I hold the memories of the Four Founders," the Sorting Hat answered as if explaining elementary mathematics to a stubborn toddler. "Or have you forgotten? I _do_ sing about it every year, you know."

"I know, I know!" Dumbledore assured the Hat. "I just… never took it to be quite so literal."

"Well, that includes _Salazar Slytherin_ 's memories," the Hat emphasized. "I remember every day of that man's life as if I had lived through it myself — as, in a way, I have."

Dumbledore blinked.

"…Do you mean to tell us that you could have told us where the Chamber of Secrets was _all along_?!"

"Well, no one ever _asked_!" huffed the Hat. "And while not the part of myself I'm fondest of, Salazar Slytherin _does_ constitute a quarter of my soul. I wouldn't betray his secrets at the drop of a hat… if you'll pardon the expression."

"Could we stop digressing?" demanded an impatient Hermione. "I'd really like to open that Locket, if you don't mind."

"Oh, yes…" the Hat remembered. "Well, that's easy. Simply order it to open, in Parseltongue."

"Huh," remarked Hermione. "Not exactly groundbreaking security. Did Slytherin think he was the only Parselmouth in the world, or something? Well, anyway. { _Open! I demand it!_ }"

Springing to life, the Locket clicked open. Within was a small mirror — and in that mirror one could see—

"Eep!"

"What is it?" Dumbledore and the Hat asked in unison.

"An eye!" Hermione told them. "That Locket has an eye, and it was _staring_ at me!"

Yes, an eye, a deep brown, slightly bloodshot, human eye which had blinked at her. Perhaps it was rather silly to be afraid of an eye — an eye couldn't hurt anyone, especially from within a locket — but there was something unnerving about finding eyes in places where you didn't expect them. An eye sprouting off a mushroom would be rather harmless as well, but any reader who claims they would not be startled to encounter such an eye on an innocent forest outing would be lying (shame on you, hypothetical reader).

"Tom's eye," Dumbledore concluded after looking for himself. "I would recognize it anywhere. This is most definitely a Horcrux."

"…Alright," Hermione said, coming to her senses. She nudged the Locket. "Hello? Can you hear me in there?"

The eye just blinked again.

"Hey! You! Voldemort!" she said, louder, shaking the Locket around. "You don't have to hide, we're on to you. And we just want to have a little chat. _Hey!_ { _Wake up!_ }"

This last command seemed to finally have an effect on the Horcrux.

{ _A Parselmouth?_ } a hissed voice said from within the jewel. { _Who are you?_ }

{ _My name is Hermione Granger,_ } she introduced herself. { _Gryffindor, Muggle-born, and your worst nightmare. Please get out of this locket before I make you._ }

{ _You are mad, girl!_ } answered the part of the Dark Lord. { _Works such as me are not unmade so easily. Not by a schoolgirl, even a pretentious one._ }

"But how would you rate my chances to succeed in such a task?" said Dumbledore, stepping over Hermione's shoulder and into the Eye of Voldemort's line of sight.

{ _Dumbledore!_ …} spat the Locket.

"Yes, Tom," he said, "me."

{ _Look, Locket,_ } Hermione said, trying to sound reasonable. { _You may be a terrible person, but we don't particularly want to hurt you._ }

{ _Don't you!_ } scoffed the incredulous Dark Lord.

{ _No,_ } she answered. { _We just want the Locket back. If there's some way to do that without killing you, we'd gladly do that._ }

{ _I don't believe you,_ } the Locket hissed gruffly. { _Why wouldn't you wish to kill us?_ }

{ _Us?_ } noted Hermione.

"He and his other shards, I believe," Dumbledore explained.

"Ah, I see. { _Well, Mr Locket, we have little interest in killing you, since we've already captured your other self._ }

{ _WHAT?!_ }

{ _Years ago._ }

{

{ _What?!… how… how long has it been?…_ } asked the Locket.

{ _The year is 1994,_ } she told the Horcrux.

The brown eye winced.

{ _So long…_ }

{ _So by our estimate you have been stuck in there for, what, over twenty years? Fifteen at_ _least_ _._ }

{ _Much more…_ } said the sentient medallion. { _Much, much more. But then… ah, idiot girl. You misunderstand. I wasn't conscious all this time; like a Portrait, I only wake when I must._ }

{ _Still, wouldn't you rather be out of there?_ } she asked him.

{ _…I suppose so,_ } he admitted. { _But I could only do this through gaining a true body… and even if you are sincere, I am not foolish enough to think you would let me do so._ }

"Sorting Hat," Hermione asked, turning back to face the Sorting Hat, "what _are_ the powers of the Locket of Salazar Slytherin?"

{ _I prefer Slytherin's Locket_ ,} said the Locket. { _It's more concise._ }

"Beyond general indestructibility," answered the medieval headdress, "its most striking feature is the Enchantment of Prigiospecchio placed upon the glass."

"…The Glass Prison Charm?" asked Hermione, remembering one of her readings.

"Yes," answered Dumbledore, "a clever and venerable spell… invented in Germany, though it is Venice which used it most profusely. It allows one to bind an item within the imaginary space of a mirror's reflection — a clever variation of the magic of Portraits. I am quite proficient at it myself; I don't believe I ever told you, but it was that spell which I used to conceal Nicolas's Stone within the Mirror of Erised."

"Oh!…" wowed Hermione. Somehow she had never put two and two together. "And how do you remove an object placed in a Glass Prison?"

"There is a counter-charm, naturally," answered the Headmaster, "but any sorcerer worth his wand would have altered the charm, added conditions to be met. That is what I did, of course."

Hermione turned to face the Locket on the table.

{ _How does one remove_ _you_ _from the Prigiospecchio, then?_ }

"Hermione," began Dumbledore, 'I appreciate your boldness, but I really don't think this will yield—"

{ _I see no harm in telling you,_ } the voice of Voldemort answered with a verbal snicker.

"…Oh."

{ _Well then?_ } Hermione asked, eager.

{ _You would have to sacrifice the Moon,_ } said the Horcrux.

{ _…the Moon._ }

{ _Yes,_ } repeated the Locket. { _Ritually obliterate the Moon, come back to me, and I am yours._ }

{ _…well that was infuriatingly me-like,_ } commented Hermione, sullen.

"We _could_ also give up," Dumbledore reminded her, "and imprison the Locket within the Corridor. While it is of priceless historical value, a Glass Prison Charm, even such a powerful one, is hardly irreplaceable—"

"No, no, I'll find something yet," insisted the girl. "Hmm… Can you put several things in the Glass Prison at once?"

"Certainly."

"How do you add something to the Glass Prison?"

"Appropriate wand movement and incantation," said Dumbledore, "and the name of the object — much like the Summoning Charm, if you will. Of course, the object has to be within three feet or so at the time of casting."

Hermione grinned in an extremely worrying manner.

{ _Mr Riddle_ ,} she told the Locket, { _would you consider being more cooperative with our attempts to remove you, if I told you that I should like to experiment on this Locket?_ }

{ _What now?_ } said the worried Sorting Hat, whom she ignored.

{ _Hah!_ } said the defiant Horcrux. { _Nothing a schoolgirl can do could harm me. Do your worst. You surely cannot cast the Fiend's Fire… and the only living Basilisk is—_ }

{ _In America_ ,} finished Hermione.

{ _What? No! It—_ }

{ _That's_ _she_ _to you,_ } said an acerbic Hermione, { _and if you are referring to the Great Basilisk of Salazar Slytherin, then_ _yes_ _, she is now my friend and currently on vacation in America._ }

{ _That cannot be!…_ }

{ _Huh,_ _people tend to say that a lot about my extracurricular activities,_ } Hermione mused. { _I wonder why._ }

{ _Bah!_ } spat the Voldemedallion. { _Never mind! Whether she is mine or overseas, the Basilisk can be of no use to you. So then I am safe. Do your worst, child! I do not fear you! In this Locket I was placed, and in this Locket I shall remain._ }

{ _Even if I experiment with the Glass Prison Charm?_ }

{ _And what would you propose to do?_ } the Locket continued, his voice still mocking.

{ _Oh, well,_ } she explained, an evil grin again alighting her youthful face, { _I was simply wondering — what would happen, if I cast the Glass Prison Charm on this Locket, and when the time came to pick the target, said "the Locket of Salazar Slytherin"? I think it would be a highly interesting experiment. Don't you?_ }

{ _YOU WOULDN'T DARE!_ } screamed the Horcrux, and somehow there was more desperation than anger in there. { _…and it's Slytherin's Locket._ }

{ _Ah, I was right, then? You'd rather I didn't? What do you think might happen?_ }

The Locket didn't answer, but the Sorting Hat _whimpered_.

{ _Alright, that's answer enough,_ } said Hermione. { _So how do we get you out, hm, Voldy?_ }

There was another long pause.

{ _Ahm…_ _this is only hypothetical, of course…_ } the Locket finally began. { _We never considered my freedom in other terms than possession… but if a golem body, an animated statue, could be found — and I could be set upon it — then it is possible… with great effort on my part… I cannot say whether my existence would remain tied to the Locket, but it is possible I might transfer my_ _consciousness_ _to such a device._ }

{ _Ah, good,_ } said the mollified Sorting Hat. { _Albus, do we have any animate, nonsentient statues we can spare?_ }

{ _Well, actually,_ } Hermione suggested, { _I know just the one_.}

And Dumbledore's blue eyes, the Sorting Hat's dark ones and the Locket's single brown one all widened in fear.

Because for the third time, Hermione was baring that devious smile of hers, and not even the large front teeth could dispel that smile's resemblance to that of a Muggle mad scientist.

* * *

"Douglas Wilkes! Well, well, well. Glad I found you," she said.

"Yes?" said the younger Slytherin with a wide smile. "I take it Lady Granger would like to renew her contract?"

"Yes, Douglas," answered the Gryffindor.

Douglas took out his small ledger.

"Are we talking one single job," he asked, "or is it another general Minion contract?"

"Hm…" she thought, "I already have two different tasks in mind, so… yes, I think a general contract would be best."

"Right."

"Same wages as last year?" she asked, business-like.

" _Actually_ ," Douglas said greedily, "it's a chocolate frog _and_ a licorice wand this year. Inflation, you know."

"Alright," Hermione agreed, shaking his hand, "but what on _Earth_ causes an inflation within Slytherin House?"

"Supply and demand, miss," answered Douglas. "The henchpeople employment pool is more or less constant, so prices go up whenever a new overlord or overlady comes around, see?"

"So there's a new overlord around?" Hermione deduced. "Who?"

"I could tell you that — _for a price_ ," said Douglas with a wide smile. "Two Every-Flavor Beans will do."

"You are an incurable glutton," she told her henchboy. "Also, we just decided you work for me again. _I'm_ your… 'overlady'. I don't have to pay you extra for just doing your job of being a minion, do I?"

If he'd been a dog, Hermione had the distinct impression Douglas's ears would have drooped right then.

"Oh. Yeah. Right."

"…So? New overlord?" she reminded him of her question.

"Oh, right. Well, the truth is, lots of minions have been selling out. I'm not judging, mind, I'm working for a Gryffindor right now, but a _lot_ of people have been working…" (he whispered dramatically) "for a _Hufflepuff_."

"A _Hufflepuff?!_ " Hermione repeated, voice dripping with incredulity.

"Yep," answered Douglas. "I didn't believe it either, at first, you know, but I've seen it with my own to eyes. At least six, seven good henchpeople, off to slave away for a badger. Yesterday, two even quit _Malfoy_ 's service for this, can you imagine?"

"I don't imagine he took it well," Hermione said, grinning.

"Nope," answered Douglas. "He whined about it and then wrote about it to his father."

"Does he ever react _any_ other way? To _anything?_ "

Douglas pondered about this.

"Well, there was that one time last year that he wrote to his _mother_ ," recalled the Slytherin. "Girl trouble — he didn't want his _father_ to hear about _that_. But yeah, that's all."

"Right. And do you have any idea who that Hufflepuff Overlord is?"

"Only that it's an Over _lady_ ," answered Douglas, "but it's all very hush-hush, and it's only been two days. I didn't particularly try to dig that deep yet, not for free. Now that I get licorice wands for this, though… I could look more into it, definitely."

"Please do," she answered. "You have my lease to pretend you want to work for Hufflepuff too, if it'll help you."

"Great plan, Miss," gushed the boy. "Anything else?"

"Yes," she answered. "Er, you weren't there yet, but you must have heard of Professor Lockhart? Well…"


	42. Monkeying Around

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Funny thing: per the Doc Manager's wordcount, this chapter has exactly 4,000 words, present Author's Note not included. Well whadayaknow. At any rate, is this chapter's title outrageous? Yes? No? If it is, then only as much as the concept it refers to, which, well, you'll just have to see. As always, reviews, faves and follows, both past and yet to come, are very much appreciated! Unless they're trollish. Constructive criticism is one thing, but while I admit my story isn't perfect, comparing it to "My Immortal" is a bit much, Mr Knight. Brhm. On with our regular program._

 **Chapter XXXIX: _Monkeying Around_**

{ _Why am I a chimpanzee?_ } he asked.

In Hermione's experience, questioning how one had come to be what one was and the reasons of existence tended to be a sign, not only of sapience, but even of _intelligence_. Tsh had once candidly asked her why she was a girl human and he was a boy snake, and that had been a very good sign indeed of things to come. Thus, a chimpanzee coming to such existential questionings would have been an amazing discovery.

This, however, was not that.

Because that chimpanzee was a silver statue with glowing red eyes, given life by the power of Gilderoy Lockhart's unfathomable clumsiness, and possessed by part of the soul of an evil overlord. It was also currently tied to a chair in the Hogwarts Headmaster's Office with a set of solid Conjured ropes.

Thus Hermione, rather than jumping of joy, answered sternly — like one might answer a stupid question from an impertinent child:

{ _We did agree, Locket, that you would let yourself be transferred into a disposable statue. Didn't we?_ }

{ _Our agreement,_ } the displaced Horcrux complained, { _said nothing about any silvery Salazar-forsaken_ _primates_ _!…_ }

{ _You shouldn't be so fussy, Mister,_ } said Tsh. { _It was the best disposable statue we found, and I think you're rather lucky, too, Mister. You're very shiny, and you have even more hands than Hermione Granger does!_ }

{ _All hands and no wands!_ } scoffed the artificial ape. { _BAH!_ }

"Tom," said Professor Dumbledore, the only participant in the conversation who didn't want to speak Parseltongue (which the Locket, while surely capable of English speech by now, insisted on doing). "Do not confuse our generosity with foolishness. We would never have given you the ability to use magic, no matter what form we found for you, and you have Miss Granger to thank for being allowed even this much freedom."

{ _Bah!_ } said the chimp. { _Bah, bah, BAH! …And my name IS NOT_ _TOM_ _!_ }

"A discussion for another time, Tom," Dumbledore dismissed the Locket before turning towards Tsh, who rested on a small cushion atop his desk. "Tell me, Mr Tsh, if you will indulge my incurable curiosity; why did you compare Tom's number of prehensile limb extremities to Hermione Granger's, in particular?"

Tsh flicked his tongue wordlessly, hesitating.

{ _…What are…_ ph… _these things you said, Teacher Dumbledore?_ } he asked finally, admitting his ignorance. { _I do not know those words. I'm very sorry!_ }

{ _No need to be sorry,_ } Tsh's witch tutor told him, motherly and reassuring. { _Those are very big words indeed; why, I know some adult humans who speak English every day and wouldn't understand, either. Albus Dumbledore is using a very convoluted sentence to talk about, well, hands._ }

{ _Oh,_ } Tsh said in understanding. { _Well, Teacher Dumbledore, that's because Hermione Granger is the only human whose number of hands I know for certain… you understand? I've seen that she has two very agile ones. You know, I would love to have even just one hand. Hands look like very very useful things._ }

Tsh's explanation, though heartfelt, didn't seem to fully satisfy Dumbledore's curiosity. (Its naiveté seemed to profoundly annoy the Locket, but nobody cared about _that_.) Thus, Hermione felt obligated to clarify in English:

"He's seen _me_ without clothes, you see, so he _knows_ for a fact that I have feet inside my shoes, not some more hands — as would be the case with a chimpanzee like the Locket."

{ _I am not a chimpanzee!_ } protested the restrained Horcruxed.

"I'm afraid all evidence points to the contrary, Tom," an amused Dumbledore answered

"So far all Tsh knows," Hermione continued,"any number of other humans could have hands beneath all these shoes and socks. But you see, Tsh — { _apes like the Locket aren't humans; they're different species entirely; like a toad and a frog. Similar, but different._ }

{ _I think I understand,_ } said the young grass snake.

"I'm sorry," said one of the portraits of past Headpeople, a medieval-looking wizard who didn't seem to be the most easygoing sort, "but did that girl say a boy had seen her _undressed_? Dumbledore, I don't mean to overstep my canvas, but I do hope you're going to take some serious disciplinary actions in the face of such — such —"

"Oh come off it!" Hermione said irritably. "Yes, Tsh has seen me naked, but so what? I'm practically a second mother to him — an aunt at the least. And either way, _he's a snake._ I'm as far removed from his idea of a sexually attractive female as an overweight walrus is from yours, Professor Vulpus."

"You… you know who I am?!" stammered the shocked Portrait Person, dropping his earlier point.

"Of course," Hermione sniffed proudly. "I've read _Hogwarts: A History_ back to back five times."

"Goodness!" said Dumbledore. "It is over a thousand and five hundred pages long, isn't it? Wherever did you find the time?"

"Around my neck," she answered. "And it's one thousand, six hundred and seventy-three pages, in the revised Garius Tomkink edition. But the point, Professor Austerian Nero Vulpus — the point is that I know exactly who you are and what you did. In 1147, you were taken on as Librarian of Hogwarts; in 1178 you became the Professor of History of Magic; in 1225 you became Headmaster of Hogwarts; you revised the Library and instituted the Restricted Section; you—"

"Yes, yes," Vulpus's Portrait cut her off, "well, it's gratifying to see you know more about my life and accomplishments than _certain current Headmasters we could name_ … but this is getting tiresome; you know my life, _I_ know it, let us keep pointless reviewing to a minimum, hm?"

"Very true, my dear colleague, very true," said Professor Dumbledore. "And getting us back to the subject, well, Austerian old chap, on top of my student's very good points, I would like to add that you have fallen behind the times on such matters. I think for the better, Wizarding Britain has grown more relaxed compared to your frankly prudish times. Our Quidditch Showers are coed, you'll recall."

"Only because my idiot successor," said Vulpus, glaring at the witch in the frame directly next to his, "when she oversaw the construction of our Quidditch Pitch, hired an architect who couldn't add figures if his wand depended on it. That insufferable imbecile built four locals when we clearly needed eight."

"Indeed?" chuckled Dumbledore. "I didn't know that such striking serendipity had been at the root of the evolution of mentalities. But I insist it was fortunate."

"We must then, as they say, agree to disagree," groaned Vulpus. "As usual whenever I try to talk to you."

{ _Would anyone please acknowledge me?_ } said the Locket in a desperate voice. { _I'm still tied up over here, damn you all!_ }

"So you are, Tom, so you are," tutted Dumbledore. "I apologize for the inconvenience, but you see, I am thinking. Pondering. In our hurry to perform the transfer once Mr Wilkes had brought us the statue, I did not stop to consider what we might do with you."

{ _You could cut me loose, for a start,_ } grumbled the Locket.

"We could," Dumbledore reprimanded, " _if_ we were overwhelmingly stupid."

{ _Bah,_ } said the Horcrux, who seemed to be doing an awful lot of bah-ing. { _I suppose that was to be expected… It was worth a try._ }

{ _Can a Horcrux swear an Unbreakable Vow?_ } suggested Hermione.

{ _…eh?_ }

{ _You, the Horcrux,_ } she continued. { _If you were so inclined, could you be made to swear an Unbreakable Vow?_ }

"I see no reason why not," said Dumbledore. "I presume you mean to ensure Tom—"

{ _I am not Tom!_ }

"—does not harm anyone once we cut him loose. I _would_ question how you learned about Unbreakable Vows, by the way, but I fear the answer would inevitably be that you read about it somewhere. …Wait… No, the more I think about it… It is not safe, I don't think. How does a broken Vow kill? I do not know — but if the Killing Curse cannot kill a Horcrux, then an Unbreakable Vow might be useless against them. It would be interesting to try, of course…"

{ _Hah! Never!_ }

"Wait," said Hermione. "I have a better idea. { _Locket! This is a friendly reminder that if you harmed anyone within the walls of Hogwarts whom you do not sincerely consider a threat to the castle, or if you made any attempts to desert the Castle, you would be failing as a protector of Hogwarts._ }

She grinned victoriously while the Locket and the Headmaster both looked extremely confused. Then the chimpanzee's blazing red eyes widened in shock before shrinking into a scowl.

{ _…Well played, girl. Hmf. Well played._ }

Dumbledore continued blinking at his student and his prisoner.

{ _Very well, old coot! You might as well untie me now. As you've no doubt understood, I'm no longer a_ _thread_ _. Bah. Bah. And bah again._ }

Dumbledore blinked again, took off his glasses, wiped them clean, put them back on, and asked:

"Hermione, I seem to have missed something. Would you kindly enlighten me?"

Hermione winked.

" _Hogwarts: A History_ , Chapter 57?"

Dumbledore continued staring with obvious incomprehension. She sighed.

"Alright," she said, "here it is. You are, of course, familiar with the various forms of Substitutiary Locomotion? And more specifically, with _Piertotum Locomotor_?"

"Naturally," answered Dumbledore. "As I know that it is that spell which Gilderoy somehow confused with a curse for banishing Chameleon Ghouls, and thus that same spell which animated Tom's latest vessel."

{ _I especially appreciate how tactfully you avoid the fact that I am a monkey. BAH!_ } the Locket scrooged.

"Yes, but do you also remember that the Founders were familiar with Substitutiary Locomotion?"

"I… yes," Dumbledore said, "I seem to recall that… yes. They started the tradition of filling Hogwarts with statues just so that in the event of an attack, they could be charmed to life and provide additional manpower in the defence of the school. What is your point?"

"This is my point: if you are so familiar with Substitutiary Locomotion, then you know how tricky it is to animate the objects with the _intended spirit_. How much like any truly powerful magic, intent is key — how you have to focus on the object and think of exactly how you want it to behave. Or else it shall instead conform to the general expectations of whoever is around, based on the statue's appearance."

"I believe I shall give five points to Gryffindor for this," said Dumbledore, "for not only have you studied years ahead, but you have condensed all this lore five times more succinctly and clearly than old Adalbert did in his treatise. But yes, I know all of this. And?"

"And then," Hermione drew to her point with building excitement, "did it never occur to you — that this would be horribly impractical in an attack? When time is short? For the one or two people in the castle who knew _Piertotum Locomotor_ , to go through every statue one by one, each time focusing their intent? You see?"

"I…" Dumbledore hesitated. "You're right. This is an aspect I had never considered."

"Well, we're in luck, because the Founders _did_. "There's an enchantment on Hogwarts — _any_ statue animated within the castle is under a binding compulsion to protect the school to begin with — no matter what personality, or lack thereof, it's given by its creator!"

"And this holds true for Tom's new body, Horcruxed or no!" Dumbledore laughed, finally understanding her point. "Hoh! Hoh! Minerva will need to hear about this — and Elphias — Nicolas, of course — hoh! Hoh! Fawkes, my dear, you will have many letters to carry tomorrow. Well then, Tom! It seems you have been defanged!"

Dumbledore snapped his fingers and the Locket's bonds vanished.

{ _My name is not Tom!_ }

"Tsk, tsk," tutted Dumbledore, "manners, soldier Tom. You answer to me, you know. You are a protector of Hogwarts, and I am its monarch. I call you as I please, and it pleases me to call you Tom."

{ _Humbug! Humbugs the lot of you!_ } shouted the Locket as he stormed out of the Office, on all four, bumping into the Bored Boar on the way.

"And do try to regain a grip of the English language!" Dumbledore shouted at the departing ape. "No offense to the Tongue of Snakes, but I think you'll find a lot more people in this Castle—"

" _BAH! HUMBUG!_ " came the roared reply.

Dumbledore and Hermione shared a mischievous glance.

"Well, at least, he listened."

* * *

Thursday and Friday passed by without issue. "Arithmancy" lessons had moved on from equations to geometry; Divination was still mostly useless bogus, though Professor Trelawney had at least taught them an actually practical bit of scrying.

In perhaps the most interesting anecdote of those two days, Care of Magical Creatures' Professor Hagrid had brought in a cute and peculiar creature called a Niffler. He'd then had the students use them to find some hidden gold; while the gold he was counting on was Leprechaun Gold he'd purchased himself, Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass's Niffler stumbled upon a chest of hidden treasure buried beneath the Whomping Willow. In the evening, Hermione of course tried to find out where the treasure had come from, what was going to be done with it, and if it was magical or just a bunch of doubloons, but the Slytherin girls had no interest in sharing anything with their Gryffindor nemesis.

{ _Hermione,_ } Tsh suggested from her pocket, { _do you want me to go listen in? I am small and inconspicuous. And I speak Human English. And I want to help!_ }

Hermione thought it over. She hadn't hidden Tsh; Hogwarts knew him as 'her pet', even if they wouldn't see him for what he was, a guest. Therefore, if they spotted him, the Slytherins would know _she_ knew, but they wouldn't _hurt_ him.

{ _Yes, go ahead, Tsh. Thank you. Meet me in the Library. And be careful._ }

She put the young grass snake down on the floor and let him quickly slither behind Greengrass and Davis, who were returning to the Slytherin Common Room.

She then made her way to the Hogwarts Library, where, rather than staying idle, she got started on her spellcrafting project. A Translation Spell.

When wizards wanted to solve a problem, they tended to do it with brute force, she'd seen. Illusion Magic was a stump of a magical art, while Transfiguration was probably the second-most studied type of magic, coming right after Charms. Permanent shielding spells — Wards, as they were sometimes called — could be achieved, but when it came right down to it, wizardkind preferred to build towers and stronghold. According to Ron, his brother Bill, the professional Curse-Breaker, was far more forced to fight fought ancient monsters awakened by triggering curses, rather than be besieged by the ancient curses themselves. And while actual speech-to-text spells existed, it was considered passé next to a sorry creature like Quentin the Quick-Quotes Quill.

A quick bit of research showed that this held true for language magic, of which the Parselmouth Curse was, to her surprise, a rather typical example. If you had to speak a new language and didn't want to learn it, then you resorted to Mind Magic; more precisely, a variation of the regular False-Memory Charm that planted the knowledge in your head, forever. But only the greatest of the greatest Mind Healers could do it for you, lest damage be dealt to one's mind. Because Mind Magic itself also followed that law of brutish directness: rather than just touch the brain, Mind Magic altered the memories and structure of the target's very soul.

Thus, no matter how fascinating that magic sounded, Hermione had determined within fifteen minutes that she would have to throw it all away and start again.

Mutual Legilimency, perhaps…? No, too hard, too dangerous. Legilimency was still Soul Magic. The point of this was to make a safe, easy-to-use Translation Spell. She went back to her idea of imitating the computer programs Muggles had devised, of recreating them with magic.

Magical programming, how could such a thing be achieved? It existed, no doubt, if not in earnest then as a possibility. Hogwarts's enchantments recognized intruders and dealt with them based on their nature, yet unlike many of its parts, you couldn't say Hogwarts itself was sentient. There were also secret rooms you couldn't open unless you had _previously_ opened that other secret passage elsewhere in the castle… And there was, of course, Professor Babbling's Third Floor Corridor trap…

She followed that lead, and found that programming was also a foreign concept for wizards, because again, they had a more 'straightforward' solution. If they needed a magical agent cleverer than just one condition-based action, they just went and created life. Copying the imprint of a human's mind, copying the pattern of consciousness and soul altogether, was far easier, far more instinctive than making an A.I. from the ground up, and that was why you ended up with the Golden Griffin, Portrait-People, or Quentin the Quick-Quotes Quill. It was despicable and all rooted in _laziness_.

Well, she would show them. She'd create a magical computer, and sooner rather than later!

Perhaps Professor Vector would help. Professor Dumbledore would, surely.

She began writing to her parents, asking them to buy and send her some books on regular Muggle computer-programming. Magic could simplify it, probably, but she'd need a framework nonetheless.

She was halfway through with this missive when Tsh returned; she was so absorbed in her thinking that she didn't notice when he climbed up her leg and sides, and only realizes he was here when, having reached her shoulder, he gave her cheek a small lick.

{ _Hermione Granger?_ }

{ _Oh!_ } she said, dropping her quill. { _Tsh, there you are. Well? Have you learned anything?_ }

{ _I have learned things,_ } he answered, { _but not about the treasure, save that Tracey Davis shall keep it. Her family needs it, she said, more than the Greengrasses do._ }

{ _True, the Greengrass family is very wealthy, they say,_ } Hermione thought aloud in reply. { _Douglas told me she's the one who stands up to Malfoy when he gets too insufferable about how rich_ _he_ _, that's something, but not really what I wanted to know. What else have you found out, then?_ }

{ _The wizards and witches in Slytherin are still very worried about the Dark Mistress of Hufflepuff. Mistress Helen Monroe. She is very rich too, I think. She keeps recruiting minions, in Slytherin and some in Ravenclaw as well. She has a scheme in motion, they think, but they do not know what it is, the Slytherins. A witch known as Parkinson said she hopes that she wishes to overrun the Third Floor Corridor with numbers; because then the Army of the Pretty Bird—_ }

{ _I think you mean Legion of the Doom Peacock_ ,} Hermione interrupted.

{ _—yes, it,_ } Tsh continued, { _then that Legion could come after them, and claim the rewards in their place. She then went to bring this plan to the Draco Malfoy human boy, and Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass prepared to do their homework, so I came back to you._ }

{ _Hm,_ } Hermione thought. { _This is… worrisome. But interesting. Thank you so very much for doing this for me, Tsh. If there's anything you need…_ }

{ _There might be something,_ } Tsh asked in a shy voice, after thinking about it.

{ _Yes?_ }

{ _The thick book on top of this shelf,_ } he said, pointing his muzzle upwards. { _I cannot reach it, yet I wish to read it._ }

{ _Oh! Of course!_ } Hermione agreed, chuckling.

A simple Levitation Charm allowed her to give her friend the large tome — _Wanderings of a Tree in the Alps_ , which she'd read two years ago. It had caught her attention as a non-human's autobiography, and she could see why it would interest Tsh as well, as he seemed fascinated by geography.

With endearment, she watched as the grass snake skillfully opened the book and began to read it, slithering over the pages to do so, so big was it compared to him. Then, she decided to leave him to dit; she gathered her notes and went back to the Gryffindor dorms, hoping to find Harry or Ron and tell them about her day. She only found Maximilian, who was also reading a novel (in his case a dark mystery story: _Unforgettable, Unforgivable_ , by Garius Ollivander, Jr).

"Hello, Maximilian!"

"Oh! Hello, Hermione," Maximilian returned the greeting, putting down his book. "Rather a good mystery, you know. I wouldn't have thought to make the bride's ring into the—"

"Shh!" Hermione shushed him. "I haven't read that one yet."

"Oh, sorry," he said. "…Say, while you're here. I meant to talk to you about something."

"Yes? Go ahead. I haven't anything to do for the evening — save that I must sleep, of course; tomorrow is the day I study Occlumency. One must be ready."

He stood up.

"Do you think I look alright?" he asked bluntly.

"W-What do you mean?" said Hermione. For the first time in months, she looked her Boggart friend's assumed body up and down. "I mean, this is — I'm no expert, I would say you're… handsome? I mean, not that I have a crush on you or anything so silly! But yes, you're… fine-looking."

"That's nice of you to say, Hermione," said Maximilian, looking down neglectfully at his body, "but what I mean is… don't I look a bit — young?"

"Er…" she considered her answer, blushing slightly as she stared at him some more. "You do have a certain boyish side, now that I think about it… but that's not necessarily a bad thing."

"Not yet, perhaps," Maximilian answered, looking genuinely worried, "but if I look this way, it's because I have only altered my _proportions_ over the summer, to make sure I wasn't smaller than everyone else this year. What I mean is, I haven't actually _grown up_. I haven't bothered with hormones and all that icky nonsense."

"As a teenage human currently producing hormones, I take offense to that remark," she said in jest. "Pfah."

"The point is, I've gotten larger, but not older, and while this has worked so far… I'm starting to notice you're all _changing_ in more than size. Boys' voices getting deeper, all that. And it's not going to happen to me unless I _make_ it — I don't want to spoil my disguise, you know?"

"Then you probably should," she answered. "I don't know. Look, _I_ am not a shapeshifter, and these are all very foreign problems to me. Do what you think is best."

"Well," Maximilian said, "I was planning on perfecting a 16-year-old form, and then slowly morphing from this to that over the next three or four months."

"That sounds reasonable."

"But then I must figure out what this form will _be_ — visibly older, but still recognizably me?… Er, have a look, this is what I came up with."

Hermione was once more reminded of how _good_ Maximilian had gotten at shapeshifting when, instead of swirls of grey smoke, only a faint ripple passed over his body as it changed from a tall boy to what was, in earnest, a teenaged young man, and a very attractive one at that.

"That seems… very good," she said. "Very good. Yes. …Perhaps you might tone down the muscles a little? It's… you're not unrealistic, but you look like a professional sportsman there."

"Oh." was all Maximilian said; the body beneath the black robes _deflated_ abruptly to a thinner frame. "Is this better?"

"Yes, yes it is!" said Hermione. Trying not to stare, she thought it all over some more. "…You should probably adjust your voice now… and your attitude… Try to see if we can plan out the gradual changes, too… Dear me, so much to do. We'll be here four hours at this rate.…"

"Worse comes to worse, you can always time-turn one more time, no?"

"True. …Say, that was a genuine loophole you found!" she added in a chuckle. "I have taught you well!"

"So! Let's see."


	43. The Dark Lady of Hufflepuff

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Bang! Have another, somewhat-more-reasonably-sized chapter. This one sort of came to me all in one go. If behind-the-scenes facts interest you, I half-wanted to include a scene with the Head Helf, Hoggy, but the opportunity didn't come up in the end. Something for another time… Also, enjoy the fun while it lasts. This story stays firmly on the side of comedy overall, but without spoiling anything, dark trials are incoming for our snake-tongued heroine, in just a few chapters! As always thanks to readers who demonstrate support through Favoriting, Following, and especially Reviewing! Those who haven't yet, please…er, do that! And now, on with our program._

 **Chapter XXXX: _The Dark Lady of Hufflepuff_**

Time seemed to fly whenever Hermione experimented on new things and concepts, especially with a friend. It was past midnight when they were finally done. Maximilian, ever the gentleman, kissed her hand before vanishing in a cloud of smoke. Oh, it wasn't true invisibility, you could see the faint shimmering in the air of the million particles he had dissolved into — they flew rapidly through the Common Room, beneath the door of the boys' dorms, to rematerialize in Maximilian's bed with his dorm-mates none the wiser. Being a shapeshifter of Maximilian's caliber truly gave one a _lot_ of opportunities, Hermione thought. She dearly wished she could do the same… but being a witch wasn't bad, and Silencing Charms did much the same job of preventing the waking of inconvenienced dorm-mates.

* * *

She woke up late, having decided that, Saturday permit, she'd rather miss breakfast than carelessly mess around with spacetime. Not that she hadn't thought it over, that suggestion of Maximilian's; but in the end it wasn't really worth it. A nagging feeling in her stomach made her glance again at the spimster-wicket around her neck; perhaps, after all, she might Time-Turn now, and attend breakfast anyway…? No, no, be reasonable. An empty stomach was no reason to tear through the fabric of reality. An empty stomach could be remedied in many different ways.

A House-Elf.

She needed a House-Elf to bring her breakfast.

Thus, she must call for a House-Elf.

…How _did_ one call for a House-Elf? For some bizarre reason, this was a detail not included in _Hogwarts: A History_.

Perhaps Professor Bagshot had forgotten about them; —stranger things happened; history spoke of a Death Eater with a particularly bad memory, who had forgotten he was a Dark Wizard right in the middle of a battle, and peacefully surrendered to "sort out the misunderstanding", only to blurt out a very rude word when it all came back to him in his Azkaban cell, two weeks later. Not to mention Professor Bagshot was said to be very old; over 200, they said, though Dumbledore couldn't tell her the precise figure.

But no, that didn't make sense. The edition of _Hogwarts: A History_ she owned was the revised 1990 printing, the one rewritten by Chroniculus Punnet based on a preexisting Garius Tomkink revision. Professor Tomkink, Professor Bagshot and Mr Punnet couldn't _all_ have overlooked such a glaring omission.

Perhaps the House-Elves had _asked_ not to be documented? The theory had merit, as most House-Elves she'd seen seemed humble to the point of self-depreciation. Or perhaps there was some unfair Ministerial law against writing books about Elves…? In that case she'd have to have _words_ with Cornelius again.

This made her glance at her writing desk as she considered whether to write right there and now, and lo and behold, she found that a letter _from_ Cornelius Fudge was precisely lying on top of the stash of her mail, which she assumed a thoughtful Hedwig must have brought while she slept.

Sighing, she stumbled out of bed more than got up, slipped on her basic robes and fell on her chair. She unsealed the needlessly-expensive lime-green envelope and read.

 _Dear Miss Granger,_

 _This is luminous advice indeed that you have given me, concerning these Muggle theories of 'offer and demand'. I would not have believed it from anyone but you, but that does seem to be how things gravitate, doesn't it? And the Goblins keep this from us, get rich behind our backs! I think I was wrong to underestimate the Goblins in the past, you know. I said I'd eat them for breakfast, and where has this got me? The 'Quibbler' are saying I'm a literal Goblin-eater, is all this got me. At least that 'Other Paper' of yours is polite enough to ignore the matter._

 _At any rate, I will try to reach out to the Goblin Liaisons Office and see if they'll let us wizards have a piece of the cake. Dear God, I hope I don't start a Goblin Rebellion with that one. But you're right, we must be bold._

 _As you have no doubt read in the 'Prophet' by now, the vote on our Snake Rights Bill is drawing close, and I don't mean to toot my own horn there, but I do think it shall pass thanks to my bold and efficient advertising. Poor Pompy's been overworked with all the dinners I had to throw; two thirds of the Wizengamot to feed is no small feat. But between those who vote with me on principle, the old Slytherins who are all for the promotion of snakes, and those whom I have swayed… I have it, my dear. That is to say:_ _we_ _have it. Of course._

 _I must again beg your advice on an unrelated matter. Henry Hawkworth, whom you may know is a Wizengamot member, has some interesting new proposals on the legislation concerning Flobberworm eggs. They are currently Class A Tradeable Materials, but he argues…_

"Right."

She stopped her reading before she could fall asleep from the inescapable dullness produced by the combination of the two dullest things in existence, flobberworms and bureaucracy. She would read that later, when she was farther away from sleep. The answer was surely obvious, anyway. Nothing at all.

There was also a letter by Lucius Malfoy, nothing important — a report of what charities and good causes he'd donated to this month. Good boy.

Well now. About summoning a House-Elf.

She had seen Professor Dumbledore call Elves by calling out their names. What House-Elves did she know?

"Toddy!"

She waited, but the pointy-nosed elf failed to materialize.

…On reflection, some of the times, Dumbledore had clapped his hands; she'd taken it to just be for dramatic effect at the time, but it couldn't hurt to try.

* _Clap_ *

"Toddy!"

No. Still not it.

Well, that was rather fanciful thinking, at the end of the day, that the Hogwarts House-Elves would respond to students. If it had ever been possible, no doubt the Slytherins would waste no opportunities to boss the poor things about all day long for free, rather than _pay_ any professional minions like Douglas, or Crabbe, or… whatever the name of the other of Draco's pet gorillas was. Coil? Toil? Something like that.

Was she to go hungry until noon, then?

She glanced back at her writing desk. Might as well finish that answer to Cornelius, then…

…wait.

*Clap*

"Pompy!"

This time, in barely a blink's time, the Fudge family elf appeared before her. The fat little thing seemed overjoyed.

"Oh happiest of days!" he said in his nasal voice. "Mistress Amaryllis was being right! Mistress Granger has called on Pompy! Happy, happy, happy!"

"I'm very glad to hear that, Mr Pompy," she said, trying to rein in the bubbling enthusiasm. "I—"

"You is not having to be calling Pompy Mr Pompy, Mistress Granger!" the Elf said somewhat more quietly, now only vibrating rather than hopping up and down. "Pompy is being here to serve you, Mistress Granger! Pompy is calling you Mistress and you is calling Pompy Pompy, that is being proper, yes!?"

"…if you say so, Pompy," she said. "Er… so it's nice that Mrs Fudge told you to listen out for me, I'd love to know how that works, this remote summoning —"

"Shall Pompy be explaining? It is being a joy to be teaching to Mistress Granger, and a great honor, and a blessing, and—"

"Pompy, _stop,_ " she ordered. It was obvious he meant well, but _by God this Elf was annoying_. "I only wanted some breakfast."

"Eep!" Pompy peeped, clasping his tubby hands over his mouth. "Pompy is being ever so sorry! Pompy is getting Miss Granger breakfast, yes, yes, yes! Miss Granger is not to be worrying! Pompy—"

"Just _go,_ " she sent him off.

"Pompy is going! Yes yes!"

And thankfully, he vanished. Exactly a minute later, he came back; or she assumed it was him, at any rate, because it was quite impossible to make out his features beneath the _heaps_ of food he was carrying. In the short timespan he'd been given, Pompy had gathered just about every foodstuff known to man or elf that someone could possibly want to eat for breakfast. Eggs, and pancakes, and waffles, and bacon, and apples, more eggs, and spam, and strawberries, and spam, and egg,s and _was that caviar?!_ and eggs, and cake, and buttered toast, and a baguette, and —

" _Pompy_!" she practically screamed. "Are you _insane!?_ "

A loud clatter accompanied the elf simultaneously dropping everything that he'd somehow been holding up until then.

"Pompy is being very sorry! Yes! Very very sorry! Pompy is swearing! Sorry! Sorry!" the House-Elf apologized, sounding like a recording played at twice the speed.

"It's nothing," Hermione reluctantly consoled the miniature chef. "But… this is simply too much. I don't think there's physically enough space in a human stomach to contain this much. …Well, there might be in someone like Professor Slughorn's."

"Oh! Oh. Eeep!" twittered the Elf as he slowly processed her explanation. "Sorry, sorry, sorry!"

Hermione had a sinking feeling that from living underneath the same roof for so long had resulted in Cornelius Fudge's lack of common sense _contaminating_ the poor Elf, because she felt exactly like when she had to talk to Fudge in person. Except the annoyance was tripled because she didn't have any high duty to her country to keep in mind as she powered on through the conversational quagmire.

She took a deep breath and said in the tone of someone who won't have any talking back to:

"A: stop apologizing, yes-ing, and generally fussing about. B: clean all this up before the poor Hogwarts elves have to. C: go get me some buttered toast and a glass of pumpkin juice. _Nothing else._ "

"Yes Mistress Granger!"

In a second hurried 'Poof', Pompy disappeared along with the food he'd dropped.

Hermione waited for a moment, but — because the Fudge household ran on the laws of comedy — it was apparently taking Pompy ten times as long to prepare a simple buttered toast and pumpkin juice than to gather the feast he'd brought the first time around.

Thus, she decided to kill time by finishing that letter. Perhaps she could have the answer ready by the time Pompy arrived and he'd take it straight to Fudge — wouldn't that be neat? She powered on through eleven paragraphs on flobberworms and the legal technicalities surrounding them, and found that, rather than stretch on the flobberworm road to oblivion, the letter actually closed the topic and mentioned something else.

 _…_ _Before it slips my mind, there is another thing about which I wish to ask you, something closer to you, actually. Rufus, my nephew, scarcely mentions you, but you two_ _do_ _attend Hogwarts , the point is, he wrote home about some… concerning things. And I never thought that Grindelwald teaching on English soil would be the least of these things, but — a Hufflepuff leading Slytherin minions? What is the world coming to, Hermione? What is the world_ _coming_ _to? Please, I only wish to understand._

 _Yours,_

 _Minister Cornelius O. Fudge, O.M._

* * *

By the time the toasts were back and eaten, the letters answered, and the flobberworms regulated, it was time for lunch. Hermione came down to the Great Hall, still thinking at the bitter humor of the Minister's priorities (which showed he was still, at the end of the day, a Slytherin), and about the 'Hufflepuff Dark Lady' situation in general. She'd barely begun eating when the topic suddenly became all too relevant.

After a shout, the Great Hall suddenly fell silent. All heads turned in one direction.

For the first time in living memory, loud noises had erupted from the Hufflepuff table.

People's faith in the timeless laws of the universe were restored when it became apparent the shout had been the work of Draco Malfoy.

"YOU WRETCHED DISGRACES!" he had shouted. "COME BACK THIS INSTANT SO THAT I MAY OBLITERATE YOU!"

One had to hand it to Draco, he really had mastered all sides of being an arrogant evil, aristocrat, from the sneer to the slightly-too-flamboyant clothing to the slicked hair. And, in this case, the loud, very loud displays of outrage.

The targets of these very, very loud displays of outrage were Bronson Pike and Pansy Parkinson, who, along with other Slytherins she didn't recognize, were sitting on opposite sides of Helen Monroe, the Hufflepuff Dark Lady.

"And what if we don't want to, _Malfoy?_ " said Parkinson. "I'll have you know Monroe appreciates proper henchcraft, unlike _certain people_ we could name."

"She also pays better," added Pike, mocking. "If you're willing to double _her_ prices, then we can always talk, you know. Oh wait, you can't. Daddy Dear cut off your stipends this year, hm? Wonder why. Perhaps he took a look at your grades."

"How _dare_ you —" seethed Draco, "— Father has his _reasons_ , and you will address him as _Mr Malfoy, Senior_ , thank you very much, and — and that's not the point! The point is HOW CAN YOU LOWER YOURSELF TO WORK UNDER SUCH FILTH!?"

"Er, Malfoy, she's a pureblood, you know that?" said Pansy Parkinson, quirking an eyebrow at her former patroon.

"SHE'S A HUFFLEPUFF!" screamed Draco with something like desperation in his voice. "What's she going to _use_ you for? _Looting the kitchens?!_ … Have a heart! Remember who you _are_! The Sorting Hat made you _Slytherins_! You're meant for greater things than fulfilling the whim of a pudgy badgerette!…"

"All give a cheer for lousy stereotypes," ironized Helen Monroe herself as she entered the conversation. "You! The slimy ferret! Have you even _looked_ at me? If anything I'm too _thin_."

"No you're not," Pansy told Monroe. "I think you're just splendid."

"No, you are, Pansy," answered Monroe.

"Also, Draco," Pansy added, turning back towards the Slytherin, "I'll have you know our Lady has a noble purpose worthy of our training. Worthier than hanging tripwire for Potter, even."

" _That was three years ago!_ " Draco defended himself.

"Doesn't mean it didn't actually catch Professor Snape and get us all three months' painful detention," replied Pike.

"Shut up, Pike!" snapped Draco. "You. Monroe. What _is_ this great purpose?!"

"Bringing a Dark Lord back to power, of course," a grinning Pansy answered in Helen's place. "Something _you_ seem to have given up on doing, funny enough."

"What do _you_ know about the Dark Lord?!" Draco asked. "At least I had information, and a plan!"

"Hah!" laughed Monroe. "Who said anything about _your_ Dark Lord?"

"…There's another?" Draco asked in genuine incomprehension.

"Malfoy," Monroe answered, "if you haven't noticed by now, your brain is even smaller than I gave it credit for. And _I_ already think I could fit in a pencil sharpener."

"WHY YOU—! I have no idea who in Merlin's name you're raving about, but—"

"GRINDELWALD, you thick-headed troll! Grindelwald!" shouted Pansy in exasperation at the other Slytherin's stupid. "Grindelwald is _in the school_! And Lady Monroe's noble ancestor fought by his side! God! What did the Hat ever see in you?…"

"Grindelwald!?…" repeated Draco, dumbfounded. "No. It can't be. You're… no! You wouldn't side with that _madman_ …"

"Oh yes, him, the one with the actual agenda and the strategic warfare… the madman," joked Helen Monroe. "As opposed to the perfectly _sane_ Dark Lord with blazing red eyes who wanted to take over the world with a bunch idiots wearing Halloween masks."

"Hey! Mind what you're saying! My _father_ was one of those _idiots_!…"

Just as he finished saying it, Draco realized just what he'd said.

"I mean—! Not on purpose! But he did wear the mask. I mean. Er. That is. It's still — insulting."

"Yes, I'm sure that's what you meant," snarked Monroe.

"You know, my Lady," said Parkinson, "you're _smart_ , really smart, compared to _this_ git. I think _that's_ why I love you more."

And Pansy leaned forward and kissed her Overlady.

Draco's eyes widened.

There was a surprisingly girlish, but still bestial scream, and the next thing anybody knew, Professor McGonagall, on her two feet, was holding a small white kitten by the collar. A small white kitten who was still clawing in Helen Monroe's direction.

"Now, Mr Malfoy—!"

The Transfiguration Professor's telling-off was nipped in the bud by a round of applause, with the most enthusiastic coming from Monroe and Parkinson themselves. (Crabbe and Goyle also started clapping, but got hexed by Zabini.)

She waited for it to all die down and started again.

"Mr Malfoy, the dreadful politics of House Slytherin are none of my concern, but as Deputy Headmistress, I will not have students lurching at others during meals. If Mrs Parkinson no longer enjoys your company, either on a romantic or… shall we say, _professional_ level… then it is her right. "

She dropped Draco (who, lacking experience at being a cat, failed to land on all four) and Untransfigured him.

"And I _do_ apologize for Transfiguring you; my temper is more to blame than necessity; but you brought it on yourself with all this unruly shrieking. You have disturbed us all for long enough."

McGonagall gave him a _glare_ but returned to her seat with not a word. He was left standing there in front of the Head Table, not knowing what to do, for quite an embarrassing while, until Professor Snape told him:

"Mr Malfoy, you are to report at my office tomorrow at six o'clock. In the morning."

"But Professor—! Tomorrow is Su—"

" _Dismissed._ "

Few could withstand the stare of Professor McGonagall, but fewer still that of Professor Snape. Draco Malfoy bowed his head and returned to the Slytherin Table, where he meekly ate the pumpkin soup, ignoring all attempts by his Housemates to make conversation, whether joking or consoling.

"…Er, aren't they going to acknowledge the whole Grindelwald, Hufflepuff Dark Lady thing?" asked Ron, looking somewhat queasy.

"Don't worry," Hermione answered with a thin smile. "Dumbledore vouches for Grindelwald, she's harmless. So I think he just wants to have fun seeing how this all plays out."


	44. Cursed

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Right, so, what I said last Author's Note holds. This story remains a comedy, and there are a fair number of jokes in this very chapter… but with a title such as this, you know some actual dark (dare I say Dark) events are about to go down. Don't go in expecting just another 'kitten Draco' routine. And now, as Lemony Snicket would say, you have been warned; if you keep on reading, you can't blame me. Also, if you keep on reading, thank you, and please favorite, follow, or review. Especially review. I like reviews. More than I do being cursed. But I digress. On with the show!_

 **Chapter XXXXI: _Cursed_**

The barkeep of the _Hanged Man_ was a rather old man for a Muggles; he was 88, in point of fact. His name was John Hanger, his face was long and wrinkled, and his tired eyes hid the vice of all small-town barkeeps: an unfortunate willingness to partake in gossip. True, there was little to gossip about in Little Hangleton; after so many, many decades of hammering it down, Frank Bryce and the Riddles' murder had lost most of their shine; but that was how one knew Jack Hanger was such a great barkeep. He made do with very little. Over his long lifetime, he'd become extremely good at picking out interesting features in the few strangers passing through town, and wringing elaborate spine-chilling theories based on those details.

Thus it was that Friday, September the 16th, 1994 was an extremely felicitous Saturday for John Hanger and _The Hanged Man_ , because his humble pub was visited by a slew of very unusual strangers.

The most normal of the bunch had a black beard, glasses, and wore antiquated clothing, which would have fueled months' worth of theories if he'd been travelling alone, but was really nothing compared to his companions.

One was a tall man with a crooked nose, gold-framed glasses, and the most _outrageously_ long beard anyone in Little Hangleton had ever seen. He wore a long, brown leather cloak over an azure-colored tuxedo.

Another had sallow skin, a crooked nose, and rather long, greasy black hair; more than his appearance, it was his _attitude_ that drove home that this was no usual traveler. That stranger looked like he could have killed a flower by _glaring_ at it, so high was the sheer concentration of bitterness and toxicity simmering inside that ugly skull.

And talking about ugly, the fourth guest was stout, hunched, and carried a wooden walking stick the likes of which could have bashed a man's brains in with barely a bit of strength. He had scraggly grey hair, a horribly scarred face, and an eyepatch, a honest-to-God pirate's eye patch.

The fifth and final guest was, in a way, infinitely more innocuous in appearance, but the sheer contrast actually made them the most incongruous of the bunch. It was a teenage girl carrying a kitten. With a round face, big teeth, and brown hair like a juniper bush, which no attempt had obviously ever been made to comb.

"Hello," said the girl — _the girl!_ — in a sweet sing-song voice. "We'd like rooms for the night, please. I understand this serves as an inn, as well as a pub?"

"…Rooms!" Hanger repeated, rather stupidly, as he was jolted out of his theorizing. "Yes, yes, rooms. Double-bedrooms for the gentlemen…?"

"No, no," answered the long-bearded man, "if it is possible, we would rather have our own rooms."

"Your own rooms! Cor!" breathed the innkeeper. "Yes, gentlemen, of course! But then I'd like to see the money, first, you understand. One must be trusting. There have been bad types visitin' us, governors, bad types. A family even lived here once."

"Yes, the Gaunts, I'm aware," the white-bearded man said, understanding.

"You _know_ them!…" said Hanger in wonder. Perhaps there was more to be squeezed out of that old lemon, after all, if one entered these strangers into the equation.

"As to our dues," said the man with the black beard, throwing a leather purse on the bar, "don't worry, mate. We're paying in gold."

Eyes alight, the Muggle opened the purse to find it indeed contained gold coins. He looked up when he heard the eyepatch man growl at his fellow:

"What are you doin', White?!"

"Paying our room and board, of course," Blackbeard answered. "Why? You'd rather handle the tab, perhaps? I understand your finances aren't so great."

" _That_ 's none of your business!" Eyepatch bit back. "Changing houses six times a year is a perfectly reasonable measure. 'm surprised no one else ever thinks of it. But that's besides my point, which is _why the **Hell** did you just pay that Muggle in Galleons!?_"

Blackbeard burst out laughing.

"No I didn't!" he got out through his giggling fit.

"I'm sorry, but does this man need medicine or somethin'?" Hanger asked. "Acause we've got special rates for lunatics. I'm not prejudiced or anything, mind, but you've got to cover expenses and all. Made up that rule after one chewed through his mattress."

"No, no, our friend Mr White is… _mostly_ sane," said Whitebeard. "Or so I used to think."

"Jester, explain yourself this instant!" Bushgirl ordered Mr White.

"Look at the coins, Hermione!" Blackbeard — that was to say, Jester White — wheezed in reply. "Look at the coins!"

Hermione-Bushgirl did as he asked.

The coins were French Napoleons.

" _Gotcha_!"

"Oh. Well _done_ , Mr White! Well done!" she clapped in good faith. "You know, my friends and I have this organization of pranksters — the Marauders, you might have heard of it. Well, I think you'd be a shoe-in there. Second-rate member at first, of course…"

Then both Hermione and Jester resumed laughing like maniacs.

"Yep, mad as mudhens," commented Hanger. "I'll just sign all of you at the special rates, then, 'kay?"

"Yes. _Whatever_ ," said the man with the crooked nose.

 _Gossip-worthy_ _and_ _gullible. Perfect customers, really,_ thought John Hanger, who, up till this day, had never had a special rate for lunatics.

* * *

Jester White, Albus Dumbledore, Alastor Moody, Severus Snape and Hermione Granger all enjoyed an excellent dinner that night; Dumbledore and Snape thought that the purpose of their travel ought to darken the mood at the table, but they were a clean minority, and thus much fun was had. Not least of which concerning Maximilian Candy, currently known as Melvin the Pussycat, an extra guest whom they hadn't bothered to mention to the master of the house. After all, it was an unspoken fact that the rules about clients were meant to apply to _humans_ ; there was nothing whatsoever among the _Hanged Man_ 's rates that mentioned shapeshifting non-beings had to pay. So really, they weren't doing anything illegal at all, as Hermione and Jester had pointed out.

"I still think this whole Boggart matter is ludicrous," Snape had complained. "Why did no one tell me _before_ it became relevant knowledge on an Order mission relating to the Dark Lord's soul?"

"Because no one likes you," Maximilian had then replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Then Dumbledore had invited all the members of their little party to rest in their rooms and prepare for the trials to come; they were set to meet at the Witching Hour outside the _Hanged Man_. (For safety's sake, none but Dumbledore yet knew _where_ he meant to find that Horcrux he had tracked down; they would only be told at the last moment.)

Hermione didn't feel tired at all, and thus passed the time reading a paper of which Dumbledore had sent her a copy; it was that monograph on Dementors that Professor Max had braved Azkaban itself to write. Professor Max being Professor Max, it was printed in lime green fluorescent ink on parchment as black as a moonless night; and words like 'wonderful', 'admirable' or 'fantastic' were, perhaps, not used as sparingly in relation to Dementors and their powers as they rightfully should; but it was still a fascinating read, bringing a wealth of knowledge that nobody had ever been bold, or mad, enough to try and find out. The hours flew by, and before she knew it, the rickety alarm clock of her room reminded her that it was a quarter to midnight.

* * *

Not a word was spoken by the five partners-in-crime as they followed Dumbledore through the deserted streets of Little Hangleton, and, eventually, into the dark and looming wooded area nearby. Thought it _was_ dark and looming, it didn't have the power, the awe-inspiring quality of the Forbidden Forest; it was small and dead, reeking of bitterness and filth. There was no life here.

"Dark place…" said Maximilian with a strange air.

Of course. It made sense, Hermione thought upon reflexion. This sort of oppressing atmosphere was precisely that in which Boggarts naturally thrived; their very being was rooted in the magic seeping through the dead Gaunt property. Ah, it was too easy to forget one of her best friends was an amortal personification of terror, sometimes…

"Dark is right," Moody said after a moment. "But… not dark enough."

"Mad-Eye, so help me, if this is another one of your bouts of paranoia!…" Snape groaned. " _I_ have some experience with such things, and I can feel no protective enchantments in this place."

"Nor I," said Dumbledore.

"Not that you have any reason to trust my experience yet, as I am a stranger to you, but me neither," Jester White added.

" _That's precisely my point_ ," Moody growled, stomping down his staff for emphasis. "Nothing! No spells, no curses, no dark wards! Not even a sphinx or a Basilisk, or _something_! You call _me_ preparation-crazy, but the Voldemort _I_ knew wouldn't leave part of his soul here without at least a hundred feet radius of deadly protection. Something's fishy."

"So in essence, what you're saying," Hermione summed up, "is that _it's quiet… too quiet_."

"…Yes," conceded the Auror, "but I was hoping to sidestep the cliché there. Points for concision though."

"I hate to disturb…" said Jester. "No, wait, I love it. But anyway, if you know we're diving headfirst into the Land of Clichés, you know what comes up, don't you?"

"You mean that things will not _stay_ quiet, Jester…" Dumbledore said grimly. "Well, you may be right. I… ahah."

The group stopped dead in their tracks; the route was barred by a fallen tree. It didn't seem so out-of-place as such; a bit more dead wood in these dead woods. But something about it _did_. The shape of the branch, the crude carvings in the bark, even the way the trunk seemed _twisted_ … it looked like…

…it looked for all the world as thought his tree wasn't just dead. It looked like it had been _killed_ … and it had put a fight before that.

"Well," said Dumbledore, "I think this concerns my theory. Tom had indeed placed a number of protections, very dark ones, including, it seems, some variation of Niko Nenad's Tree-Animating Jinx… and those protections were torn down some time ago. The feeling of dread that permeates these woods must be the echo of those fallen wards."

"But then, the Horcrux —" Hermione thought aloud.

"Indeed, perhaps it is no longer here. Perhaps it has been removed."

"What if it was the Locket all along?" suggested Jester, carelessly sitting down on the remains of the tree golem. "We never did find out what it was doing in the Black collection. Could be they raided this place just so they could add a Horcrux to their little curiosity shop."

"That is… possible," Dumbledore granted. "That would make this whole trip rather pointless; though in any event we did get a fine meal out of it. Yet… I doubt it. I doubt that it is Slytherin's Locket which Voldemort hid in the Gaunt Shack. My research indicates that he tracked down the Locket in… no, the dates do not concord with the Riddles' murder, which I truly think he must have used for the creation of the Horcrux we are seeking today. No."

"Well, if you think so, then let's get movin'!" Moody said abruptly, jumping over the tree's carcass.

In no time, they reached a misshapen, battered building that must have been a cottage in its demented architect's mind, but could only really be called a shack. Its wooden walls were mossy and supported a roof off which so many tiles had fallen that the rotting rafters were visible in places. Dumbledore, as always, had been stingy with information, but if this was truly Voldemort's ancestral home… if this was where he had grown… then Hermione could easily understand why Tom Riddle might have aspired so vividly to a greater, nobler future.

Upon the door was a horrifying sight. The shriveled, rotten remains of an unfortunate snake, nailed where the knocker should have been.

"Oh God. Oh Merlin, no…" Hermione muttered. "I… we've got to, to bury him. It's… we've got to. _God_."

"I understand," Dumbledore said. With a few spells, the snake flew off the door, a grave was dug, and a small stone slab transfigured.

 _UNKNOWN SNAKE_

 _Murdered & Exposed_

 _by a Fiendish Soul_

 _Found 1994_

"…Thank you,"

In silence, Dumbledore and Moody in the lead, they penetrated inside the shack. Its inside was an empty room; there had been some furniture here in the past, one supposed, but now all that remained were the creaking floorboards, and dust.

And darkness.

Somehow, though there was a window or two in the room, no light seemed to enter; only the lights of their _Lumos_ spells seemed to illuminate the empty house.

"Still no working protections here, so far as I can tell," Moody diagnosed after a few spell. "Except, funny enough, there's a remote-access _Cave Inimicum_ left standing."

"Fat lot of good that'll do old Red-Eyes where he is now, hah!" said Jester.

"Oh, don't you laugh!" rasped Moody, pointing his staff at him. "You know what this tells us? Either our mystery burglar knew, knew for sure, that Voldemort couldn't answer the signal, and he didn't care to dispel this…"

"That doesn't sound so terrible," commented Hermione. "It doesn't mean much, really. Most people have thought him dead for thirteen years."

"…True," said Moody, "but it's the other thing that worries me. What if _they_ placed the alarm for themselves _after_ they raided the place? Eh!?"

"…Oh."

The six looked one another in the eye in silence. Jester swallowed.

"…Did you hear that?" said Maximilian, breaking the silence.

"What? No, I don't believe I did," Moody said. "And I'm _always_ on the lookout."

"It was… a cracking sound," the Boggart described. "Muted. Outside."

"…A cracking sound? Like wood snapping?" said Jester, dismissive. "We _are_ in a crumbling wooden shack. In the middle of a wood."

"That's no reason to let down your guard, Mr White!" huffed Moody. " _Constant vigilance!_ A crack somewhere like this, _could_ be twigs — _or_ it could be Apparation. …But that only goes for real noise. Which this was not. You're hearing things, Candy."

"I'm hearing things _better than you do_ ," insisted Maximilian. "I have improved hearing. I specifically designed my ears to be as sensitive as possible."

"Oh. Okay. We should worry now," Moody said.

In a surprising bit of dramatic timing, a cloaked figure burst through the wooden door, wand at the ready. The man wore the skull mask of a Death Eater.

"That would be… Barty Crouch Junior. Right?" Jester White whispered.

"…Apparently," Dumbledore replied before speaking up. "What do you want, Crouch?"

The Dark Wizard shuffled awkwardly.

"You haven't…" said in a strangely hoarse voice.

"What?"

"…found it. …Damn you! Damn you. Should have given you… more time."

Abruptly, the Death Eater whirled around and cast at Maximilian.

"Bah!" he said. "You boy. Dig. In the centre. Pick it up! Pick it up, damn you!"

"Why would I do that?" asked Maximilian, aloof.

"Because…" There was a dark chuckle. "Because _Imperio!_ "

The sickly-yellow pulse of light of the mind-controlling Unforgivable flew out of Crouch's wand; with superhuman speed, he dodged, and the spell hit the spot on the floor that Crouch had pointed at, instead. The misaimed force shattered the floorboards, revealing a gleaming golden box.

"Damn! _Imperio!_ " he cast again, only to be parried by… Moody's walking stick?

Yes, Moody had held out his walking stick in the path of Crouch's curse, and _reflected_ it — the staff could _do_ that?!

"Hermione," Dumbledore hurried, "take cover, get out if you can. _Incarcerous!_ "

The villain dodged. His reply, " _Confringo!_ ", was caught by Dumbledore in flight and dissolved.

" _Sectumsempra!_ " Snape joined in the fight.

There was a slashing sound through the air; Crouch's response was too slow; it seemed he had been hit, a gash appeared in his cloak.

Yet he stood with no ill effect.

"What?!" barked Snape.

Hermione, finally realizing that she was still standing frozen in place, and remembering Dumbledore's order, fell to the floor on all four and crawled to a corner of the dark room, lit only by the lights of the curses exchanged. Hoping the darkness would shroud her, and dearly regretting that she hadn't borrowed Harry's Cloak for this trip, she observed the six-way duel.

Crouch was aiming to kill; that much was clear; though mixing up some Imperii in there, still. But he wouldn't, couldn't win, not with Dumbledore in the room. Every curse was dodged, deflected or outright dissolved before it hit home. As for her friends themselves, they seemed to be… _testing_ their opponent, more than they tried to take him down.

And they didn't like what they were finding.

What few of their curses hit the Death Eater's shrouded form. It seemed to have no effect on him.

" _EXPULSO!_ " Crouch yelled, and the deep blue curse hit Maximilian, actually hit him; for one moment Hermione feared the worst.

Then she remembered who he was as the magical energy was harmlessly absorbed into his body. His eyes seemed to shine blue rather than their usual purple for a moment; and that was it.

It was Crouch's time to sputter in confusion. But then he mouthed one word, breathed with a mix of surprise and exasperation.

" _Boggart_."

Then again that uncanny, rasped chuckle, and a triumphant cry of _Riddikulus_.

For the first time in a long, long time, genuine fear showed on Maximilian's face. Abandoning all pretense, the Boggart flashed into a lightning bolt, rematerizaling at the other end of the room — just in time to avoid the Boggart-Banishing Curse.

"Hahahah!" Crouch laughed. "Interesting, very interesting, Dumbledore. Dabbling with Boggarts. I don't know how, but I'll find out. Later. _Riddikulus!_ "

"AAH!" Maximilian screamed, _actually screamed_ , again jumping out of the way.

"I'll get you yet, Boggy-boy!" chuckled the Death Eater. "This is a closed room! Hah! You—"

Then he fell down.

A wandless Leg-Locker Curse from behind.

With his peg-leg, Moody kicked the skull mask off Crouch's face, to reveal—

—another skull.

A real one.

The face of a corpse, the skin grey and parched, the eyes glassy and white.

Moody and Dumbledore shared a glance.

" _Incendio!_ " they immediately cast in unison, soon joined by Jester, engulfing their prisoner in flames.

Soon there was nothing left of the Death Eater but ash.

"What… _was_ that?…" Hermione asked, getting to her feet.

"An Inferius," Dumbledore explained, brow furrowed, eyes distant. "The undead puppet of a Dark Wizard. Weak to fire, and only to fire. Voldemort used armies of them, in the last war…"

"Not just any Inferius, Albus," Moody corrected through clenched teeth. "An advanced variant. Powerful Dark Magic. Crouch was remote-controlling that thing, casting through it even. The stuff of old legends. He's a genius, that one. A mastermind of darkness."

"So I come to realize…"

"Mates, there's something you're missing, still," said Jester, looking somewhat disturbed.

"Yes?" said Hermione.

"That face…" he said, nervously adjusting his glasses. "I only glimpsed it, but I… I think… I'm pretty sure that was _Karkaroff_."

Hermione's eyes widened.

"Well… this solves _that_ mystery."

"Yes. Would that it never came to this… even for someone like Igor Karkaroff, this is…"

"…yeah," Hermione finished awkwardly. "Er. So how about we take the Horcrux and go? If he was really remote-controlling that body, Crouch knows what happened. He might drop on us with another any time now."

"…true. Friends, grab my hands, beard, and any other appendage you may want to cling to, please. Maximilian, my boy, do pick up the box."

Within seconds, they did as instructed, and the whole group was squeezed through time and space.

* * *

An indeterminate, unbalanced heap, they landed in the middle of a bright forest clearing.

"…Where are we?" Jester was the first to ask.

"And also, did you just side-along-apparate _five people_ , including a spirit and a Dark Artifact?" Hermione added, amazed.

"Somewhere in Wales," Dumbledore answered, "and yes, yes I did, don't mention it. Now, as to the matter of the Horcrux…"

He went to open the box. Moody stepped in his way.

"Albus—" he said, "not to be rude, but Crouch Jr. wanted _one of us_ to open that box and pick up that Horcrux _for him_. What do you deduce?"

"It's cursed," Hermione completed. "Horribly, horribly cursed for anyone who touches it. So cursed, that after going through all the trouble of dismantling the protections, Crouch didn't _dare_ touch it… and instead waited for one of _us_ to take the blow instead. God, that clever, morally-bankrupt _bastard_."

"Righto," said Moody. "If I were your Defence Professor, which I'm never gonna be, because I too know to stay away from curses I don't understand, I'd be giving you a straight O. …So what do we do, Albus?"

"Wait, I think I have an idea," Hermione said, brightening. "Touch-activated curse, right?"

Moody cracked open the lid of the box with the tip of his cane and performed a few detection spells on the golden ring within.

"Yyyyup. And nasty too."

"Therefore…" she said, remembering one of last year's Transfiguration lessons. " _Lapiforcipe Mutandis!_ "

The next moment, the pebble she'd picked up had turned into a pair of pliers.

"Clever girl…" Sirius whistled.

She moved to pick up the ring.

"Wait!" Moody yelled, but too late—

The moment the iron maws closed around the Ring, she understood the extent of her foolishness.

Loopholes couldn't solve everything. A dark red crackle crawled up the pliers at lightning speed. The Turban had _thought_ of this. She tried to let go, but all too fast, the curse struck her right hand. She cried in pain. _The Turban had thought of this!_

Too late, she dropped the tool, staggering backwards. She held her hand up through her pain; the tips of her fingers were blackened and withered, like a mummy's fingers, and the blackness was spreading. It seemed to her that her spirit had split; half a neutral and curious onlooker of the events that were unfolding, and the other half handling the regular human business of screaming in pain and losing control.

The observant half felt her body fall down, though the trauma of hitting the wooden floor was nothing next to the burning pain in her hand. In slow motion, she saw Moody and Dumbledore leaping towards her, wands outstretched — Moody began a spell —

" _Dif-_ "

 _Diffindo_ , her brain filled in. He meant to cast _Diffindo_.

"No!" she cried out, wrenching control of her voice back from her instincts. "Ngh — don't!"

"I've got to, girl! Sorry!" said Moody.

He wanted to help, but she couldn't allow it.

"Mustn't!" she groaned. "If it goes… pliers, it… Spell trail — curse — would hit _you_!… if you interf… rgh…"

" _Damn_!" cursed Moody. "She's right!"

"Let me!" said Dumbledore, shoving Moody aside.

It was around this point that the dark magic crackling up the nerves of Hermione's hand succeeded in shutting down that rational side. For many an agonizing moment she was only a vessel of feeling. Crackling pain, and then vibrating magic, Dumbledore's magic, she was dimly aware that it was; healing magic. Fighting within her hand as she lay helpless on the floor. Then she sank.

* * *

She woke up from a long and dreamless sleep, looked upon by Professor Dumbledore. His golden glasses were the first thing she noticed. Next were her other friends, huddled on either side of the Headmaster, from Harry to Neville to Hedwig, who were all looking at her with great sadness. And finally, the fact that she couldn't feel her right forearm. With her left, she pulled her blanket aside, and, to her horror, found that nearly the whole of it was black and shriveled.

"You… couldn't lift the curse, then," she observed, her voice neutral.

"No…" said Dumbledore in a very sad voice. "Only stop it. Slow it down. It is the most devious curse I have ever seen; in a hundred years I could not devise a way to destroy it. Your body is, I am afraid, forever tainted. I am… sorry. Sorry to a degree you cannot imagine."

Damn the Turban! The whole situation still seemed tremendously unfair to her. She liked her right arm. She'd never done without a right arm. How would she cast magic without a right arm?

"Have you asked the Locket…? It's _his_ curse!"

"I have thought of it," he answered, grim, "but even he does not know how to stop his creation. Tom always was something of an idiot savant — like so many, he is only ever brilliant at what interests him _._ And lest it apply to him, Healing could not be farther from his interest."

"There has to be something," she muttered, as much to herself as to Dumbledore. "There _has_ to be something. …Elixir! Elixir of Life. It's said to heal everything. Everything! It could heal this, couldn't it?"

Again the apologetic Headmaster was forced to crush her hopes.

"I'm sorry, Hermione, again and again, but no; that also, I considered; but while it would heal your arm, the curse _would still be there_. It would resume spreading the moment the healing was done. It is no solution at all… likewise for Phoenix Tears, though Fawkes did offer."

"But I need that arm, dammit!" she growled. "Let me see, let me—"

Dumbledore swallowed, his pale blue gaze shifting. Her silent friends — and Madam Pomfrey; how long had Madam Pomfrey been here? — looked equally embarrassed.

"Hermione, you—" Harry began.

"I'm afraid you don't understand," Dumbledore cut him off, eager, it seemed, to speak himself, "Hermione, I am terribly, terribly sorry. But more than your arm is at stake. That curse… is not static. We have weakened it for now, but it will spread. Quickly. I… you have, at the most, a week to live."

A heavy silence fell on the room.

Hermione processed something about most of her friends — not Maximilian, or Hedwig, or Tsh, of course — but most of them, yes, most of them looked as though they'd just been crying.

She coughed.

"Brhm. All the more reason to hurry up with the thinking, then."


	45. Planning to Survive

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _I seriously debated whether to end this chapter at the letter, but I'm not that evil. Unlike Barty Crouch Junior. Who is a terrible person. Boo. Hiss. Anyway, I believe the cleverest among you, if they'd caught my foreshadowing chapters and chapters ago, will know what's up by the end of this chapter; if you don't, you'll have to wait for the next chapter, where I promise the whole trick will be revealed, as well as its consequences. In matters entirely unrelated, yes, I very much had Pratchett's Librarian in mind when designing the fate of the Voldemort in the Locket. Anyway, after my cursory "please fave, follow and/or review" reminder, I leave you to your reading._

 **CHAPTER XXXXII: _Planning to Survive_**

On Monday morning, some time before noon, Albus Dumbledore Apparated past the stairs to the Gryffindor Fourth-Year Girls' Dormitory, and, finding the door closed, knocked politely.

Only silence answered.

He knocked again, somewhat more firmly, and called out:

"Hermione?"

This time a groan of a response came back, muffled through the heavy oaken door:

"…Ugh! Fine! Come in!"

The elderly sorcerer found his teenage friend alone in the room, sitting cross-legged on her bed, eyes shut.

"…Hermione?" he prompted again.

"Yes! Yes! What?!" Hermione finally answered, her eyes opening just so she could flash an extremely angry glare at him. "I was _thinking!_ "

"I… understand you may not be at your best, Hermione," said Dumbledore, obviously trying his best to be tactful, "but Professor Flitwick told me you missed his class this morning. That is the first time this has happened in four years. He is quite concerned."

"Well you can tell him that for this once, I have more important things to do than attend his class. I believe bloody _dying_ is enough of an excuse."

"… _I_ know this, of course, my dear," Dumbledore explained, shifting around, "but Filius does not."

"Haven't you told him?"

"I haven't told _anyone,_ " said Dumbledore. "It was not my secret to tell."

"I — well, I suppose you meant well," she said irritably, "but you might as well tell them all. It's hardly going to _stay_ a secret if I die, is it? And if I do make it through, then having survived one of the Turban's curses should surely help my reputation. Not that I'm proud, mind you, but you know very well that a reputation _helps_ in trying to convince the ignorant and incompetent to do the right thing in spite of themselves. Plus, if he hears of it, that'd be sure to spook Barty."

"You are taking all of this in with… surprising calmness", he observed.

"Well," she explained, her face still blank, "it's that or a breakdown. And the last thing I need is a breakdown, right now. So meditation it is."

"Odd," Dumbledore thought, "knowing you, I would have assumed that I would find you in the Library at this hour."

"One has to multi-task. I've sent Tsh and Maximilian off to the Library on my behalf."

"Impossible! Filius did not tell me anything about Maximilian being missing."

"I lent him my Time-Turner," she said. "And yes, yes, I know, that's against the rules, but again, _dying of a Dark curse over here_. Security can take a vacation. So anyway, Tsh and Maximilian are investigating the Library, so I can just sit here and mediate."

"I see. But quite what do you mean by _meditating_?"

"I'm trying to recall everything I know that could possibly help with this. Not much positive success thus far — I've called up a surprising amount of fiction by accident — but at least I have turned away a few trails. Think of it this way: I don't have an answer yet, but I have a better idea where to look. …Speaking of which," you wouldn't happen to have a book on Horcruxes, would you?"

" _What_?!" he gasped. "Hermione! You — you couldn't _possibly_ be _considering_ —"

"No, of _course_ not," she groaned. "I only need to check some of the finer points of soul theory. More precisely, I need to know how _not_ to accidentally split my soul."

Dumbledore blinked.

"What was that?"

"What?"

"…No, no, nothing," he eluded. "Just a thought. I… yes, I suppose I could lend you some documentation on the Darkest Art, yes. If you swear not to do anything foolish with that knowledge. Soul Magic is a dangerous path to tread on, even with the best of intentions…"

"I promise," she said loud and clear to placate her mentor's concerns.

"Good. Oh, this reminds me…" He seemed hesitant. "I hate to take up your… truly valuable time. But there is something you must know, something we must discuss."

"…fine," she granted, uncrossing her legs. "I suppose as long as you're here, we might as well. What is it?"

"That Horcrux we found, at so terrible a price… the Ring… is more than it seems," he stated, removing said Ring from one of his fluffy blue coat's pockets.

"What is it, then?" she asked, staring at the object whose curse had so drastically shaved off her life expectancy. It was so small. So unassuming. "…Please don't tell me it grants invisibility."

"Dear me, no; you refer to the fabled Ring of Gyger, I suppose…"

"Er, that's not actually—"

"…but no. You see, it is not the band which is precious. It is the stone."

Dutiful, she looked at the stone in question. It was surprisingly large for a ring, but did not appear of any particular interest. It was of more or less regular shape, smooth and black (obsidian, probably), and as dusty as one might expect of a pebble that had spent decades beneath a dirty shack's floorboards.

"Really?"

"Really," Dumbledore said, solemn. "This, Hermione, I have no doubt… is the Resurrection Stone."

Resurrection Stone? It rung a bell. Hermione's mind skimmed through memories of her readings… Resurrection Stone? Right, an obscure reference she'd found in Chapter 5 of _Gems in Enchantment_ , Argus Bagnold… pointing to… to…

"Beedle the Bard," she finished out loud. "But… that's just a fairy tale!"

"Not quite," Dumbledore corrected her, slipping into 'teacher mode'. "Old tales are often distortions of old truths, metaphors for forgotten wisdom, or even satires of true men and women who were lost to Time. Few parents think of this when they repeat the tales, yet scholars know quite well that Sir Luckless was a transparent parody of a wizard known as Sir Locksley, with a barely disguised name at that; when it comes to the _Wizard and the Hopping Pot_ , well… you and dear Quentin know that there is nothing absurd about a sentient magical owner disapproving of its user's usage of itself; and Babbity Rabbity—"

"Albus," she cut him off. "This is all fascinating, but time is of the essence here. The point, please."

"The point is that, although I highly doubt they met Death himself at a crossroad, the Three Brothers did exist, and there are records of their fabulous Deathly Hallows throughout History, if one knows where to look. In fact, there are one or two Hallows which you are well-acquainted with, albeit unwittingly."

"What?" Hermione asked reflexively. Then she thought. Oh. _Oh._ "…Harry's Cloak, is it? A family heirloom, supposedly, and yet it hasn't even begun to fade after several years… god, _that_ 's the Cloak of Invisibility in the tale?!"

"Indeed."

"…Great. Super. Harry's life remains a clichéd adventure novel."

"…But that's not all," said the sorcerer, ignoring her comment.

He presented his wand.

His long, ancient-looking black wand with elderberry carvings. The one with which he could _use_ _Reparo on other wands_.

"Really. … _Really._ "

"Yes."

"So!" she sighed. "Resurrection Stone. That's a thing. Well then, that sounds like something my plans should take into account…"

"Perhaps," commented Dumbledore, "but perhaps not. The Stone is a powerful device, but it can only call shades and phantoms; not restore true life."

"Ah, I see," she nodded, now remembering the story more clearly. "Still. Hm. Have you gotten — _him_ out of it yet?"

"Well, no," he admitted. "In all honesty, I'm not quite sure _how_ to go about this. The Ring lacks a straightforward interface such as the Diary and Locket possessed."

" _Now_ _does it_ ," she said, unimpressed. "Here. Gimme this."

Somewhat clumsily, she grabbed the ring with her only good hand, her left. After clearing her throat, and recalling the tale, she turned the Stone thrice within her closed palm before intoning:

"I call forth the Shard of Tom Marvolo Riddle within!"

A black mist seeped out of the Stone and coalesced into the smoke-like figure of a wizard in plain black robes. The phantom's face was hard to make out, blurred and distorted like molten wax; but his fingers were long and thin, and his eyes burned crimson.

" _Who dares summon me_?" said the Voldemort in the Ring in lieu of preamble. His eyes fell on Dumbledore, and then on Hermione's mummified right arm; his thin lips curved into a cruel grin. "Aah! You are the one whom my curse struck. _Hhrhck_. I see you have helped her, old fool, but she shall die, all the same… soon… I can feel it. The Dark Magic, mine, pulsing through—"

"Oh hush," Hermione cut short his tirade. "I'm not going to die, I don't think, any more than you're going to achieve anything. As this self or another."

" _What_?!"

"All you have achieved," Dumbledore said, "splitting your soul so loathsomely, is to give Miss Granger the opportunity to arrest you that many times, Tom."

" _My name is not Tom!"_

"Oh good," she quipped, "him too."

"Eh?"

"The Locket said that too, before we turned him into a monkey."

"Before you _what?!_ I — Locket?! How— why you —"

"Yes, Tom," said Dumbledore, "the Diary and the Locket are both within our power."

"Hah! I will not be neutralized so easily! Three selves are _nothing_. I have made myself _legion_! Five times over, have I made myself immortal! Made myself _invincible_! Made… myself… _GOD!_ "

"Indeed, Tom?" the Headmaster said in the exact voice of a disappointed teacher. "So foolish? Your passion for monologuing bravado is once again your undoing. Tells me, what has all this delusional bragging achieved? No, no, I shall tell you. You have told us. Actually told us. How many Horcruxes we have left to find."

"What?! _CURSES_!" cried the decidedly unsubtle blaggard as he realized his mistake.

"Look, we're wasting time here," said an impatient Hermione, cutting off the two sorcerers' bickering routine. "Here's the question. You. Ringy. Will you kindly move into a statue body and let us have the Stone, or do I have to go fetch my Basilisk friend?"

"Your… your…"

" _Yes._ Well, _will_ you?"

* * *

Within ten minutes of arguing, followed by spell-casting, followed by more shouting, the Voldemort in the Ring had gained a new vessel in the form of a beautiful 15th century terra-cotta knight. By all accounts he was better off than his Locket brethren, for all that the chimpanzee was made of a nobler material, but Voldemort seemed to be especially upset that it was a _lady_ knight. He was even more upset when he was made aware of the _behavioral limitations_ that came with it, but they allowed Dumbledore to order him off to find the other embodied Horcrux and leave them alone with the now harmless Ring and Stone.

"Good. At least _that_ is taken care of," said the Headmaster. "Two more Horcruxes then… it seems. I shall inform the Order of the Phoenix of this."

"Right," she opined. "But you know, I'm kind of sad he's been transferred into such a precious and fragile work of art."

"How so?"

"You have no idea how badly I wished to punch him in the face."

"…I see."

"Well, another time, perhaps. Anyway. This Resurrection Stone. Bearing in mind that it's _not_ all that relevant to my current predicament, what about it did you _actually_ want to discuss with me?"

"I… well…" Dumbledore hesitated. "There are — many — whom I yearn to call forth with the Stone. Some heroes and wise men of old, to find out crucial details lost to history… some unfortunate victims whose murders shall at last be confounded… and others yet, for more personal reasons."

"Well, who wouldn't want to do these things, if they had this sort of gadget?"

"But the Tale," he continued, "speaks of the woman whom the Second Brother summoned being overtaken by sadness and pain for as long as she was kept in the land of the living. Was it because she was held too long, and against her will, away from the home of her everlasting peace and happiness? Or was it something more — _visceral_ — to a dead soul being unnaturally forced to exist on the mortal plane? This is one detail that the broad, simplified Tale of the Three Brothers does not make clear. I must know first, before I use the Stone; so hard as it may be never to have said goodbye, it would hurt me more, I think, to subject their souls to such a torment out of my own selfishness."

"That's very thoughtful of you," she said. "But again. I don't have time for side-projects right now. What do _I_ have to do with it?"

"You have to do with it that, if you do not mind the pessimism, you may soon die; and that you are, I believe, enough of a scientist, curious enough, that you may agree to participate in a… test. If you will agree to let yourself be summoned through the Stone, in the event of your demise… you would be… tremendously helpful."

"Let me get this straight," Hermione said, drumming her good hand's fingers on her bedsheet. "You want to take advantage of my premature death to test an ancient dark artifact on my soul. For science."

"I, er, yes… I mean, I, this is entirely up to y—"

"I'm in! … _Obviously!_ "

* * *

 _Dear Minister Fudge,_

 _By now you may have heard rumors which claim that I am dying. They are wholly accurate. But don't panic! That's only temporary. I yet may not die, and if I do, then even then I won't really._

 _Oh, stop worrying, you'll understand when you need to._

 _As to your question, a proper figure might be 10 percent. Eleven, if your finances are tight. Nine, if the beaver lovers associating makes too much ruckus._

 _Your friend with some tricks up her sleeve,_

 _Hermione Granger_

* * *

 _Dear Mum and Dad,_

 _I… don't quite know how to tell you this. You remember Lord Voldemort, of course, whom I wrote you so much about, and Professor Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix of which I am now an official member? And I do think I mentioned how he split his soul and stuffed parts of it into powerful magical artifacts. (Yes, that is every bit as unhealthy as it sounds. Probably worse, actually)._

 _Well, we of the Order have made it a priority to look for them, and I took part in the latest mission to track one down and take down the dark protections. We investigated a cursed forest, fought a zombie, and had a wonderful time in a very picturesque inn. But then I made a… mistake. To cut a long, complex-magic-lore-involving story short, I underestimated the wiliness of the Royal Dark Pompousness, and got cursed for my trouble._

 _It's serious. Er. Really serious._

 _"_ _I-have-a-week-to-live"-serious._

 _Sorry._

 _But it's alright! The depressing diagnosis above is only if I don't do anything about it, and I'm_ _very_ _determined to do something about it. I've got a rather good idea, too, if I may say so myself, which I shall try to enact tomorrow (that's Wednesday, in case the owl is delayed). I'll write to you then to tell if it worked. If it didn't, then of course, I'll come back home for goodbyes and stuff._

 _You may think I'm acting very relaxed about all of that, but we talked about this. Rationally speaking, death isn't actually all that bad if you take into account all the evidence we can glean from magic. Souls are a thing (in fact, megalomaniac madmen cut them apart and stuff them in lockets because it makes them feel powerful), ghosts are very much real as well, and all in all there's clearly an Afterlife of some sort, and not an unpleasant one at that. Mind, I'm still very, very cross at dying so young, but it's not a final goodbye. It's more like… unexpected moving to Mars. Think of it like that. Please, you mustn't be sad about this. I'll be alright, no matter what! For a measure of alright._

 _And if it makes you feel any better, recent information indicates that even then it wouldn't have to be goodbye until you, well, joined me. As the upside to that unfortunate expedition, Professor Dumbledore and I have acquired a magical device that lets you communicate with the dead. Again, we need to iron out a few kinks, but it seems very likely I'll see you again even if my plan fails._

 _Which, I repeat, I don't think it will. It's a good plan._

 _Please, please, please don't go overboard with grief and worry. I seriously debated whether to tell you all of this; I decided truth, in such a serious matter, was more important than 'sparing your feelings';_ _please_ _don't prove me wrong._

 _Your loving, capable, for-now-alive-and-very-intent-to-stay-so daughter,_

 _Hermione_

* * *

Wednesday, when the clock struck twelve. (It didn't have to be just then, but dramatic effect _always_ helped. Always.)

In the Great Hall. She'd come down from the Tower, her useless withered arm in full view.

Gasps and questions, ignored with a smug little smile. Jeers from Draco, also tossed aside.

She listened to Dumbledore making the pained announcement of her probable death. Yes, let them all worry, just for a moment — or celebrate, depending. Compassionate eyes turned towards her. First-Years, almost (or even truly) crying. With Luna very happy to educate them on how it was all a hoax from the Bulgarian Magiherpetological Society to get cheaper bubblegum.

His short but poignant speech concluded, Dumbledore sat down slowly and slowly, slowly started eating; a simple bodily function fulfilled, his heart ostentatiously not into it.

It was time. Time for the fantastic twist. It would work, it would theoretically work, they couldn't tested it all out, of course, but the theory was sound, Dumbledore had agreed—Flamel had agreed—Moody thought it was madness to try it, but in theory he'd agreed—

Maximilian, tearful, adoring — such a wonderful actor, as always! — leaned forward over the table, the food swept aside in what seemed to be powerful accidental magic, though it was really Sirius wearing the Invisibility Cloak.

He embraced her tenderly, lovingly, romantically.

Leaned forward.

And kissed her.


	46. Return

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Here we are! Congratulations to those who guessed the solution ahead of time. And to those who predicted limb-cutting, well, it's not what you thought, but there's definitely something like that going on here… (Am I turning into George Lucas? Please no.) As always, thanks to all followers, favoriters, and especially reviewers for their support. Those who aren't any of those three yet, please consider joining that happy jamboree!_

 **Chapter XXXXIII: _Return_**

She did not, as the laws of romance would have it, 'lose herself into Maximilian's kiss'; he may have been a handsome boy and a surprisingly good kisser, but there was nothing romantic about that kiss, in spite of the way they had staged it. It was a magical kiss. A savior's kiss.

A Dementor's Kiss.

Years ago, the educated Boggart had observed the battalion of Dementors com to look for Sirius Black. He had seen how their souls and bodies were put together, and he had wanted to imitate it — for all that Hermione had dissuaded him of it at the time, even then he had been quite certain that he _could_ do it, with enough time and observations.

There, Professor Max's research had been invaluable.

The Ghoul Studies researcher had not only given precious details on the mechanics of soul extraction, to complement Maximilian's memories; he had also determined — God, they didn't even want to imagine _how_ — that during a Dementor's Kiss, the soul-sucking kiss itself was separate from the soul-destroying digestion that followed. Thus Maximilian could easily replicate the former without even touching the latter.

And so he did.

Through Maximilian's customized lips, Hermione's healthy soul was removed from her irreparably tainted body.

It wasn't a pleasant process, even performed by a dear friend and with surgical precision. In a physically unquantifiable yet very visceral way, having her soul separated from her body felt like all her hair and nails being ripped off all at once.

This was followed by a sentiment of floating apathy; she wasn't sleeping or comatose, yet no sensory information would reach her; thinking itself became a distant and foreign thing; only dimly did she feel herself falling out of the outside world and, well, _into_ Maximilian. Not physically, of course, but rather metaphorically; although from the perspective of a metaphorical being, this was just as solid as falling physically would have been for a physical body. If that made sense.

She landed in a dark gray chamber.

It was tangibly an illusion of a place, a daydream only as fleetingly real as a flash of light in the clouds. It was more the _concept_ of a chamber than it was a chamber; she was quite sure they was there, but the walls and floor were… _abstract_. Their presence was certain as long as she didn't dwell on it, but trying to look closely at either was as useless as trying very hard to get a good look at your nose.

All of this was quite disorienting, and it took a moment for her to regain self-consciousness. Slowly, she felt she had a body in this place; or rather, the _idea_ of a body — if she could have zoomed in, she had little hope of finding cells, blood vessels or even bones beneath the strangely unblemished skin of her perfectly symmetrical form. Well, at least, that form did have a working right arm, so there was that.

One more abstract moment of thought later, it occurred to her that this astral body appeared to be, in fact, naked. Only, the moment she grew embarrassed and wished she had her usual robes on — suddenly — she _did_.

"Interesting," she said out loud, suddenly aware that she had a voice.

So this realm obeyed to her thoughts? This called for further testing. Putting her Occlumentic resolve and Conjuration practice to good use, she wished, very strongly, that a gigantic mauve pineapple appear before her.

Which it immediately did.

Okay… could she make it vanish? Yes. And now come back? Yes. Not let's see, could she turn it into a living thing? Say, a green rhino with dragonfly wings—?

"Hello," said a voice behind her.

She willed to whirl around, and she couldn't honestly say whether she had done so or if the entire realm had twisted through space to accommodate that wish, but a second later she was facing the one who'd spoken.

Namely, Maximilian.

"Oh, hello, Maximilian," she said.

"How… are you feeling?"

"Strange. But, well, I'm not dead, so… I think it worked."

"Apparently, yes."

"…Where _are_ we?!"

"I'm not quite sure," Maximilian answered. "Logically speaking, within my soul, I suppose. Some sort of limbo. I can't be sure, you understand; in a real Dementor there's nothing like this, you'd already be dissolving in agonizing pain by now."

"Alright," she said, "but why are _you_ here, then? Are you… your subconscious, or… something? What's controlling your body up there?"

"Nothing," he explained. "I'm, well, I suppose you would say asleep. As soon as you were — _inside_ , I felt a window at the back of my mind, a gateway to this place. It's… well, it would have seemed very strange to _you_ , but it wasn't so odd for me; it was a lot like how I can perceive people's fears when I'm close to them. So, as soon as I was able, I went to the Secret Classroom, left my body to lie on the bed and went through to meet you."

"Really?" she noted with surprise. "It's been that long? I feel as though I've been out of my body for barely a minute!"

"You would," said Maximilian. "Time is different inside someone's mind. It's all… relative… subjective… well, there's some weird… timey-wimey effect… going on."

She chuckled at Maximilian's fumbling words.

"Must be," she agreed. "Say, what happened to my body, anyway?"

"It was as we predicted," he told her, sympathetic. "It collapsed the moment I took you from it. I… think it must be dead by now, without your magic to help fight off the curse."

"True," she winced. "Well, then, I should try to get out of here before people get too sad."

"That might be a good idea, yes."

"…How do we _do_ that?"

* * *

Professor Gellert Grindelwald had to admit he was confused. Without failing, all of the students he had taught so far had been a little afraid of him. He didn't relish it as he once would have, knowing where that fear came from; but he'd grown used to it, all the same. And yet, as he finished the roll-call for Hufflepuff Fourth-Years, he couldn't help but notice the young witches and wizards before him scarcely paid attention to him. They looked sad, or sullen, or even disturbed; and he would have assumed he was the cause of that, but they actually seemed relieved when he spoke to them and jolted them out of their dark reveries. By the time he started with the Gryffindors and they too replaced their former bravado with that same forlorn apathy, he was quite sure there had been some somber and momentous event that day which, having just materialized in Hogwarts, he hadn't been made privy to.

Just time to finish the roll-call of Gryffindors, and he'd ask.

"Brown, Lavender…"

Present.

Whatever it was, perhaps he may wring a lesson out of it.

"Barrie, Kellah…"

Present.

—No! No. He mentally scolded himself. He needed to stop thinking of people's misfortunes in such utilitarian terms. That was the sort of thinking that had led him to —

"Finnegan, Seamus…"

And next, ah, yes, that interesting Granger girl…

"Granger, Hermione?"

Now then, where was she? He looked around his projection of the classroom — surely Albus's beautiful machine couldn't be malfunctioning —

"Merlin! Granger Hermione! Is Granger Hermione here?"

"No, sir," Helen Monroe reported. "She's dead, sir."

"She is _what?_ "

"Dead, sir," Monroe repeated, her face still blank. "She died today, at lunchtime, sir."

"Stop calling me sir!…" the golden phantom lashed out. "I lost any right to that, long ago! …Granger dead. No. At Hogwarts! Under Albus's watch! What happened? Tell me!… Tell me, damn you!…"

"I believe she told you already," said another voice, a voice Grindelwald had memorized.

His head snapped to the right, towards the door of the classroom, and there was Granger entering with an insufferably, amazingly confident smile.

"I died."

"…!?"

"Then I came back," she added. "Well, I'm quite sorry for being late, it took me a little longer than I planned for. Did I miss anything?"

"!… …?…"

"Oh, that's good, then."

" _What did you do!?_ " the Professor asked, finally catching his breath.

"I _told_ you," Hermione . "I got killed. By the Turban's latest horrible curse. Then I came back to life. And no, you shouldn't ask me any more than that, that would be prying. Professor."

"Do not tease my — Professor!" shrieked Monroe, eyes alight. "Tell Him the truth, for He deserves it!"

This had the interesting effect of instantly turning Grindelwald's attention off Hermione for him to instead glare at the offended Hufflepuff girl.

"I'm… sorry?"

"She has no rights, sir," Monroe insisted. "No rights at all. To withhold any secrets from one such as you."

" _Why would you—_ "

"You may find this hard to believe, sir, but not all look down upon you. Not all have forgotten your greatness. The Monroes are Hufflepuffs. The Monroes are loyal. The Monroes do not forget!"

Grindelwald rubbed his temple and then appeared to sit down on a chair that existed only in Nurmengard, on the other end of the connection.

"Well, Miss Monroe," he said. "It would appear you have studied my speeches. Well done. Hm. One point to Hufflepuff for skillful, impactful speech, yes."

There Monroe's neighbors saw her almost _swoon_.

"But five points _from_ the House Hufflepuff—"

*CLANG*

"—for clinging on, wrongfully, to a dark past that I most of all strive to forget. I am your Defence Professor, Miss Monroe, and that is strictly — Miss Monroe?"

"It appears," Hermione commented, "that _Miss Monroe_ has fallen off her chair."

"Has she," Grindelwald quirked an eyebrow. "Oh. Well. You, her henchmen… yes, you, Pike, Warrington; I realize she must have paid you two to be here, Slytherins have nothing to do in this class; yes, yes, I'm on to you, don't be so surprised. Well, escort her to Madam Pomfrey, will you. And impress upon her that this mindless worshipping must _cease_."

"Will do, sir," said Warrington, a hulk of a boy who effortlessly lifted a still in shock Monroe on his shoulders and carried her out, followed by a sulking Bronson Pike.

"Now," said Grindelwald in a cutting tone, "if we may resume the lesson with no further interruptions…?"

* * *

Because going against Gellert Grindelwald at this point would have taken more insolence than existed in all of Gryffindor put together (…save for Fred and George), the lesson did, indeed, resume, and even continue to its natural conclusion. It had been a rather pedestrian lesson on the theory of curses — one couldn't _always_ practice to the exclusion of everything else. At the end of the allocated time, students left the Defence Classroom a little less ignorant than before, and a little calmer as well. All but one. Professor Grindelwald had given the resurrected Hermione a series of discreet looks and signs, beckoning her to stay and talk with him at the end of class. Of course, noticing that she was staying, a few curious students had wanted to stay too and see what would happen,;but Hermione Granger and Gellert Grindelwald, _both glaring_ — well, it would have taken no less than Professor Snape to top that.

"So, Professor Grindelwald," said Hermione. "I understand you are still curious about my miraculous return?"

"And the reason you were gone as well," the old man added, "in the first place. You understand, I am never at Hogwarts outside of lessons; only letters reach me."

"Of course…" she understood, "Albus didn't tell you. Don't take it personally — he told no one else, until today, which was too late for a letter to reach you. …Well, alright, I shall tell you. We were hunting Horcruxes, and I got cursed."

"Riddle's Horcruxes, you mean? And what were you doing on such an expedition?"

"I'm the one who figured out there _were_ Horcruxes in the first place. Albus more or less owed me. And besides, my talent for loopholery might have come in handy. …Mark that I say _might_ have, because that's actually why I got cursed."

"Ah… overconfidence," he mused. "A classic mistake. I'm sorry. But how did you survive, then?"

"Well, I didn't really," she replied. "My body didn't. It's dead. I'll have to ask Albus where he put it."

"You… call him Albus."

"He asked me to, yes," she defended herself. "We _are_ friends, you know. Is that so odd? I'm sure he calls you Gellert."

"…He does, yes, but I am not his student."

"No, you're his prisoner. And subaltern within the school."

"Touché."

"Anyway," she moved on, "my body died, but I'd already gotten my soul out of it by that point. Do you know Limbo is a very disorienting place? Well, at any rate, here I am, placed within an artificial body."

She knocked her hand against Grindelwald's desk, producing a clear _Clonk_.

"I suppose you couldn't see it on your end," she commented, "if you see us as blurry and discolored as we see you; but this body isn't _flesh_. It's magically reinforced porcelain with top-grade Substitutiary Locomotion applied. Albus Transfigured it and enchanted it for me."

She flexed the fingers of her right hand to demonstrate the vessel's range of motion.

"Fascinating…" Grindelwald marveled. "But… magic. Can you use magic?"

"Unfortunately, no, not yet," she answered; she waved about her wand, which failed to produce any sparks at all. "It's still much better than nothing, though, to my mind. And this is only temporary; soon enough I'll correct that."

"Really! And — how?"

"I'm going to get myself a new body, of course," she answered. "A real one. It's going to take a ritual, of course. It's planned for Saturday."

"Hah!" laughed Grindelwald. "Such a fascinating child you are…"

"I think I'm hardly a child any more," she protested playfully.

"Perhaps not among other youths," he answered, distant. "No, perhaps not. But to old men like Albus or I, what are a few years more or less? …You'll understand."

"I suppose I will," she answered. "…Oh, say, there's something you'll want to know, I think, if I'm not misremembering your biographies."

"Yes?"

"We've got all the Hallows," she stated with a small, satisfied, cheeky smile.

"…you do," the old man croaked.

"We do," she finished. "As it turns out, the Potter family is directly descended from the Peverells, and Harry inherited the Cloak. I've used it several times, myself."

"…I know the Wand," he said, obviously not wishing to be reminded of its circumstances. "But what, then, what of the Stone?"

"It was the Turban who had it," she asserted. "Lord Voldemort, that is; we call him the Turban, I, it's rather a long story. Well. I don't quite know how he found it, if he ever used it, or even knew it for what it really was; but he had it, and he turned into a Horcrux."

" _The fool!_ "

"Don't worry," she told him, "we got the soul-shard out of it, with no harm done. Although yes, that _was_ rather stupid of the man. And, er, well, there you have it. Albus and I have it. I… don't quite know who of us two should be considered its owner, anyway. Perhaps Voldemort stole it in the first place and it has a rightful owner to be returned to. In the meantime… well, there's no harm in getting some use out of it, is there?"

"I suppose not…" mused Grindelwald, his wrinkled face baring a bitter smile. "It is Fate, taunting me, you know. That the three Hallows have been brought here before me, when I am powerless to take them — gathered, in a way, yet split between three good friends who will never take them from one another, never _unite_ them really. And that random luck has achieved, in the hands of good people, what all my brilliance and destruction never could… oh, the irony of it. Heh. Well! I deserved this, Fates, you three old lie-spinners, I deserved it! I admit it! Are you happy?!… I'm sorry, Miss Granger. I… will want to dwell on this, for awhile."

"I understand… Professor," she said. "By the way, you must be rather confused about Helen Monroe's behavior — well, you guessed mostly right. From what we have seen and I have found out, she seems convinced that you are still, er, evil, and she wants to spring you out of Nurmengard. And her. A Hufflepuff. She went and hired minions. _Slytherin_ minions. That is what I call _dedication_ , albeit up the wrong tree, so to speak. But I think she's harmless."

"Oh, most definitely," he said. "I _might_ possibly break out of Nurmengard if I put my mind to it and had a team helping me on the outside, but with a team of British teenagers and an _unwilling_ target, for I have no intentions of going on the run, I do believe she has absolutely no chances of succeeding. Well. Good day, Miss Granger."

"Yes, good day," she said. "I'm sure you have things to do, and _I_ 've got some letters to write."

* * *

 _Dear Mum and Dad,_

 _Yes, so, you can stop worrying. My plan worked exactly as planned, in no small part thanks to Maximilian Candy and Professor Dumbledore's skillful help. I'm no longer dying. To be fair I_ _am_ _an animate porcelain statue for the moment, but we're working on that; next time we meet I'll probably be back to flesh and blood._

 _Your loving daughter,_

 _Hermione Granger_

* * *

 _Dear Minister Fudge,_

 _Thank you for sending all those concerned letters and recommendations for doctors, that was_ _ever so nice._ _Though I won't lie, the latter did not actually come into play in my healing. Which did take place. I'm alright! Still recovering (it's a bit of a weird problem, I'm currently made of animated porcelain… enough said, it will be sorted out in a few days), but alright._

 _A moose in the Department of Mysteries does sound like a thorny problem. If Gilderoy Lockhart has offered free service, then yes, it may be financially advantageous to let him try, but I would advise stationing an Auror nearby in case something goes horribly wrong. From my admittedly limited experience with him, Mr Lockhart appears to be more competent with a pen than with a wand; I truly wonder how much of his adventurous tales have actually been_ _verified_ _._

 _Again, I see no harm in giving it a try, but do not expect too much; should all else fails get Prof. Newt Scamander to deal with it. It's a little outside of his range, but I hear he has a lot of experience with catching animals running amok in urban areas, and a good understanding of animal psyches in general. If Professor Scamander seems reluctant to come, write me, and I'll have Prof. Dumbledore weigh in._

 _Your friend,_

 _Hermione Granger_

* * *

 _L.M.,_

 _Sorry, but you're going to have to cut off and regrow your hand again. Come to Hogwarts on Saturday._

 _H.G._

* * *

 _L.M.,_

 _No, I won't tell you why yet, I have my reasons, and anyway don't argue._ _I_ _'m in charge here. We've got Elixir, you big softie, just like last time!_

 _H.G._

* * *

 _L.M._

 _Fine! Afterwards I'll buy you a peacock. Happy?_

 _H.G._


	47. Warring Egoes

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _There you go! Another slice of Parselness on the rocks. Look forward to the Resurrection Ritual next chapter. As always, many thanks to favers, followers, and particularly reviewers! And now on with the show._

 **Chapter XXXXIV: Warring Egoes**

Thursday and Friday saw the resurrected girl attending most of her classes, though she was, as Grindelwald had guessed, prevented from actual spell-casting. This was only temporary, of course; Lucius Malfoy, for one, knew and dreaded that on Saturday, a ritual would be performed to bring her back to true life. It was a dark ritual she had found in the appendix of _Secrets of the Darkest Art,_ an unforeseen bonus, as she had only picked up the book for the soul lore.

The 'ritual' consisted, in truth, of a potion, with the slight difference that the _manner_ in which the ingredients were procured, and later dipped into the cauldron, would matter greatly. The Resurrection Potion also required that the soul to be incarnated already have a physical vessel of some sort; the anonymous author of _Secrets_ had a lot of ghastly suggestions for what such a vessel might be, from possessed infants to an ambulatory, alchemically-created poisonous mold, but Nicolas Flamel and Dumbledore were of the joint opinion that the porcelain statue would be enough.

In the meantime Hermione did her best to ignore her inability to cast spells, consume food or even sleep. It was easier than it sounded, fortunately, because she could count on the advice of someone who had done that her whole life long: Minerva the Portrait. A nearly disembodied mind, Minerva had said, could find solace in intellectual stimulation, and pretty soon she would stop thinking about her peculiar condition. Finding intellectual stimulation was not much of a challenge for Hermione and her spellcrafting project; it was hard to get bored when you could lose yourself into the Hogwarts Library all night. And after some initial reluctance, Madam Pince had allowed her to do just that, once she had realized a porcelain statue _did not breathe_ , and was thus the most silent reader she could ever hope for.

Though he would need to sleep eventually, had no classes to end, and thus mostly perused the Library in the daytime, Hogwarts classes stopped early enough that there was some overlap between Tsh's reading binges and hers. Friday evening was one such overlap.

That evening, Hermione was hard at work on her first theoretical draft of her Magical Translation Software, the Babblebook. After giving the matter much thought, she had decided to exploit the data-storage method employed in Everlasting Diaries — which always appeared to have precisely 60 pages, no matter how many you'd filled up, with the earliest ones sinking into an invisible netherspace until you skimmed back to them. She had isolated the theory of this knowledge, and had combined it with the language-interpreting wizardry of (non-sentient) Dictaquills.

The result would be a book that, once they had been copied into it, would invisibly contain all bilingual dictionaries; a visible page of the Babblebook would be left blank, and if you wrote down a sentence there, and then the language in which you wanted it to be translated, the desired translation would appear 'd need more research into magical voice-boxes for an _oral_ translation spell as she'd originally sought, but the Babblebook would still be a gold mine.

She was putting the finishing touch to her diagram of the spell interactions when Tsh undulated onto her parchment.

{ _Hey!_ } she protested

{ _I am sorry if I am disturbing you,_ } Tsh apologized, { _but I have had an idea. From what I was reading._ }

{ _What_ _were you reading?_ } she asked with interest.

{ _A book concerning Transfiguration,_ } he answered. { _It seemed like a useful read, since your current skin is Transfigured._ }

{ _True, and that's very nice of you,_ } she said, { _but I_ _will_ _shed that by tomorrow…_ }

{ _Precisely,_ } Tsh said. { _It is a rare opportunity, and tomorrow it will be gone — I think — well, you should take advantage of it._ }

{ _In what way?_ }

{ _To-to be a snake,_ } Tsh stuttered.

{… _Wait, how, exactly?_ }

{ _Your body is Transfigured, yes?_ } Tsh explained. { _Well, for your convenience, Teacher Dumbledore made it in your old skin's likeness. But perhaps… if I understand this alright… perhaps he could Transfigure it again, while you are still wearing it, into something completely different. Like a snake. Wouldn't you like to know how it is to be a snake? I thought you might._ }

A wide grin appeared on Hermione's face.

{ _Tsh, if you were a human, and if my lips weren't made of solid matter, I could kiss you right now. Hang on. I'll go see Albus!_ }

* * *

She practically skipped all the way to the Headmaster's Office at the thought. As usual, the Bored Boar let her in without any fuss, but as she climbed the Spiral Stairwell, she began to hear some shouts.

" _Mine!_ "

" _No! MINE!"_

That sounded like — surely not.

" _Me first!_ "

Why _yes_ , that _was_ Professor Snape's voice, and the other was—

" _Give it to me!_ "

—Professor Dumbledore?!… Oh, those two overgrown _children_.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!"

The two men interrupted their fighting immediately, frozen with Snape still pulling on the Headmaster's beard.

"Are you two nothing more than overgrown, robed, wanded _children_?!"

"Sometimes I wonder," grumbled the Sorting Hat. "To answer your earlier question, Miss Granger, Albus and Severus have seemingly decided to revert into toddlers and scream in my earholes over some bauble or other. And just as I was about to take a little nap, too…"

"To be fair," said Headmistress Wilkins, "it _is_ frightfully hard to find a day of the year when you are _not_ snoozing off. Amazing how a being without any muscles can always manage to be so tired."

"Right, right," Hermione said. "Well then. Albus. Professor Snape. What is this about?"

"The Resurrection Stone," Snape _sneered_ — which was a clear indicator he'd regained hold of his self-control. "It _seems_ our generous Headmaster intends to hoard it for himself."

"Severus," Dumbledore defended himself, "I am only doing this for your own good! It does not do to dwell on dreams—"

"—and forget to live," the Potion Master finished, his voice dripping with contempt. "Yes, so you've said already. But it sounded somewhat less profound when you first said it, while you were half-strangling me with my tie."

"I _see_ ," she said, sounding more and more like an angry nanny. "Albus, all make-believe cryptic wisdom aside, _who_ do you want to summon so badly, and _why_?"

"…uh… I" hesitated the old man, the very image of the proverbial kid found with his hand inside the equally proverbial cookie jar. "…oh, dear. You always see right through me, my friend."

"Stop acting as though she's being astoundingly _clever_ or _something_ ," Snape told him. "It's you who are pathetically incapable of subterfuge. You—"

"Snape, hush," he was ordered. "This is Albus's turn to speak. _Well?_ "

"I… er… that is…" Dumbledore stammered and stalled for a few moments more, before collapsing into his chair. "…My sister."

"Your… sister," the two other humans in the room repeated slowly.

"Sister? You have a sister?" the Sorting Hat spluttered. "No you don't. Pf. I'd remember. Don't try to pull a fast one over—"

"Yes, my sister," Dumbledore admitted. "Ariana. She never came to Hogwarts, Hat, she never could. I… she died, long ago. Too long ago. As a child, or nearly so. It was my fault — I — she was ill, and I, I neglected her care for my studies and for my _friendship_ with _Gellert_. She died, and… and I never could say sorry."

A heavy silence met Dumbledore's confession. Even the wheezing silver instruments held still.

"I…" Hermione spoke, "…This is probably a century too late, but Albus… you have my condolences. I'm sorry. …Er. Well. That sounds… reasonable, anyway. As a motive to use the Stone, I mean. What about you, Professor Snape?"

"None of your horklumped business," he harrumphed. "Unlike the pompous pile of vibrating remorse masquerading as our Headmaster, I have no interest in exposing my private affairs to a nosy Gryffindor _know-it-all._ "

"Well in that case, I see no reason _Albus_ and the _know-it-all_ would share _their_ Stone with _you_. Pro. Fes. … _Sor_."

"… _your_ Stone. _Your_ Stone!…"

"I did almost die getting it," she justified herself proudly. "And Albus was the one who did all the research to figure out where it _was_. Oh, I'm sure you _helped_ … as did our dear friend Jester, who thus has as much claim to the Stone as _you_ do, _need I remind you_ …"

" _FINE!_ " Snape cut her off, grinding his teeth in a very unseemly manner. "I will tell you. I — well it — mnble — Lily – mmn. There."

"Eh?"

"Lily Evans," he enunciated, his eyes elsewhere.

Hermione knew that look, from a childhood spent with the Doctors Granger; it was the look of a child reluctantly admitting they liked sweets to a dentist. And the name — the name was familiar. Perhaps—

"…You mean Lily Potter?"

" _I mean Lily Evans,_ " seethed Snape.

"Ah, right," she remembered. "You, James Potter, achenemies. Okay. Well, why do you particularly want to see her? It seems to me Harry would have a better claim there—"

"He loved her," Dumbledore said. "Severus loved—"

"DON'T YOU _DARE!_ " Snape shouted, lurching at his superior, only to be held back mid-course by a simple yet timely wave of Dumbledore's left hand.

"I'm sorry, Severus —"

" _No you're not_ —"

"—but you must be honest with yourself, and so with us, if I must allow you to see her once more. Now, Hermione… Lily Evans and Severus Snape _grew up_ together, the best and closest of friends. They studied magic together, each bettering the other's. It was – beautiful."

" _Yes_ ," the bitter man said, still looking away. "Yes it was."

"When they reached Hogwarts, however, Lily became a Gryffindor, and Severus, as you know, a Slytherin. They were separated, for the first time in their young lives. Each made friends in his or her own House… each grew to match them. Which was made more unfortunate still by the — political inclination of Severus's new _friends_. It is hard to gravitate between a Death Eater and a Muggle-born for one's two best friends, and one day —"

"— one day," Snape interrupted him, eager to wrap up the tale in his own words, "I — chose. Poorly."

Without really meaning to, Hermione glanced at Snape's forearm, where the Dark Mark had shone before she cured him of it.

" _Yes_ ," he confirmed, having caught on to her train of thought.

"But… you _changed_ ," she said. "I don't understand. You _changed_ , didn't you? Switched sides? Of course, that didn't stop you from being an obnoxious nuisance with most people, but surely—"

"I _changed_ , yes," Snape growled. "But my motive, the catalyzer of that change — have you considered that? Extraordinary things come at extraordinary _prices_. It took Lily's death to convince me of the error of my ways."

"…Ah."

"Yes."

She kept staring at Snape for an awkward moment before turning on her heels to grab the Resurrection Stone from the desk. Cupping it protectively inside her porcelain fist, she reasoned:

"Alright, so. You both have very moving and legitimate reasons to want to use the Stone."

" _Thank_ you," the other two wizards chorused.

"Now, Albus, you have been waiting to talk to your sister for the longest…"

Dumbledore beamed and reached for the Stone, but she pulled away.

"…but this also means Professor Snape's is a fresher to be fair, he does have more to apologize for."

"So you think," Dumbledore argued. "But I overlooked one key detail in my earlier summary. Ariana did not die of her condition itself. She was… killed, during a duel. A duel a was a part of, as were Gellert, and — well. None of us know whose curse so tragically hit her. It may be… it may be that I killed her by my own hand."

"Perhaps!" argued Snape, waving his cloak around for emphasis. "But there is no _doubt_ that I, Severus Cygnus Snape, was the cause of the deaths of Lily and James Potter! _I told the Dark Lord the Prophecy!_ "

"Once I almost tore down the Statute of Secrecy!"

" _I called her a mudblood_!"

"I wanted to take over the world!"

" _I AM THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE!_ "

"What does that even mean?! I once schemed to become Master of Death! My great-great-grandmother lay dying and still I perused my blasted books, in the hope—"

"This is nothing!" Snape said. "At half Granger's age I spent my nights designing curses deadlier than the Dark Lord ever dreamed of!"

" _I stole my brother's bottle as a toddler!_ "

" _I scribbled on the wall of my mother's st—_ "

" **ENOUGH!"**

* * *

Blown to the ground, Snape and Dumbledore shared a guilty look.

"My, my," Dumbledore commented with a bitter smile. "I did not intend for this body's lungs to be so powerful."

"THIS IS NOT A CONTEST OF WHO HAS THE _DARKEST BACKSTORY_!" she shouted back.

"Alright, alright!" winced Snape.

"And ALSO! _ALBUS!_ " she went on, showing no signs of calming down whatsoever. "Have you _entirely forgotten_ about that oh-so-noble idea of _TESTING IT OUT FIRST_ BEFORE USING THE _ANCIENT DARK ARTIFACT_ ON YOUR _LOVED ONES_?!"

"Oh, yes, that," was all Dumbledore could say.

"HAH!" she continued, grabbing the Stone. " _Right!_ Since _I_ am the only reasonable HUMAN BEING in this _SCHOOL_ , I shall handle this for you. Brhm. Let me see. Disposable soul. …Right! IGOR KARKAROFF!"

This time, there was none of the bizarre smoke-and-mirrors effects which had accompanied the summoning of the Shard of Tom Riddle. The glowing, translucid wizard just — appeared, blinking into existence before she could even notice.

"VHAT IS GOING ON?!" shouted the spectre.

"Ah, hell to you too, Igor," said Snape, now his usual dryly sarcastic self. "As should be obvious, a hissing porcelain girl has decided to use an old pebble to summon you from the great beyond. …And aren't you just glad you _asked_."

"VHAAT? VHAAAT?"

"Yes, I'm fine, thank you. So _nice_ of you to _ask_ , Igor. And what about you? Who are things down below? Is Hell treating your rotten black soul well enough? Hm? Fire and brimstone to your convenience?"

Calming down a little bit, the phantom crossed his arms in a distinctive pout.

"…it is not Hell," he grumbled. "Is different. Better. Mortals, do not know a thing."

"Ah, good, good," said Dumbledore, once again feeling in control of the situation. "Now, to be clear, this is the Resurrection Stone, the very one spoken of in legend. We acquired it recently, but needed to test it before we summoned any of our loved ones. I trust you are feeling no adverse effects from your presence here?"

"No," said Karkaroff. "It vas a surpreese, but only because I vas not looking at _you_ vhen I vas summoned. It vas painless. Altough, I _vould_ like to go back schoon, if possible. I vas playing poker with Emeric the Evil, and I am afraid he vill cheat, if I am not back schoon enough?"

"…is that what you do in Heaven?" Hermione noted casually. "…Look at Earth, if you're feeling like it, and… play cards with historical people?"

"Cards und other tings," chuckled Karkaroff. "Ve have many hobbies. All of them, from all of History, truth is. _I_ just happen to like poker, and Emeric alzo."

"Alright then," she said. "Alright. We'llleave you to it. Unless, of course, you have something you want to tell us before you go? Some last message for the world of the living, goodbyes you forgot, an insult you never dared to tell to your aunt Prudence's face… that sort of thing?"

He thought.

"Mmmmh. …h, yes," he found. "Before Crooch came back, I had; uhm, plans, to — er. That is. I found the Goblet of Fire."

"And you wished to resurrect the Triwizard Tournament?" guessed Dumbledore.

"Yes," confirmed the former Durmstrang Headmaster. "And now I shall vill the Goblet to you. Perhaps you and my successor could arranch someting next year, yes? Give me parchment."

Ghosts could use light objects such as quills and parchment; thus it came as no surprise that Stone-Ghosts, known to b e better in most respects than ordinary ghosts, could do so as well. The shade of Karkaroff soon drew up a small addition to his will, which revealed the Goblet of Fire's location and bequeathed it to the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

It took several tries to dismiss the spectre; as it turned out, Beedle did not give the way. Turning the Stone backwards any number of times was useless, as was vocally dismissing the phantom; in the end Dumbledore was the one ot guess that one must ceremonially _drop_ the Stone, at which point Karkaroff vanished.

"…So I didn't want to interrupt, but what _is_ the Goblet of Fire?" Hermione asked immediately.

"An ancient and terrible device," Dumbledore explained, "used in Triwizard Tournaments to select the Champion. The Goblet of Fire is a crucible of Fate itself — through just their name, written in their own hand, it finds out all about its candidates, and makes it choice, predicting who would be the most…"

"…competent?"

"Spectacular," he corrected. "The Triwizard _is_ a public sporting event — though both are essential, showmanship tends to ultimately prime over skill in such things."

"Even in the Wizarding World!…" Hermione groaned.

"Of course," said Snape, cynical. "Wizards are nary any less backwards or corrupt than their Muggle neighbors. The wizards' sole advantage is that it is relatively easy for that are thing — a clever and lucid mage — to bypass the idiots in his way, to build themselves a blessedly isolated tower of knowledge and power, and to live in it."

" _Alone_?" Dumbledore asked, with a meaningful glance at the Resurrection Stone which Hermione had picked back up.

"Well… perhaps not quite…" the Head of Slytherin admitted.

"Whatever the case may be," said Dumbledore, "I shall collect the Goblet of Fire some time in the future."

"And you would bring the Goblet of Fire _here_?" the Sorting Hat asked, oddly apprehensive.

"Why not?" answered Dumbledore. "It may not be the worst idea to come out of Highmaster Karkaroff's head, I think…"

"I'll take it under advisement," said Hermione. "It _sounds_ good, but from what I've read, Triwizard Tournaments tended to be cheerful manslaughter festivals more often than not."

"True," Dumbledore argued in good humor, "but then, so did ancient Quidditch, no?"

"And Quidditch is _still_ ludicrously hazardous," Snape replied. "Draco Malfoy nearly fractured his skull during the Hufflepuff-Slytherin game last week."

" _Did_ he now?" said Dumbledore, concerned.

"Yes," Hermione admitted. She hadn't been there, of course, but Ron and Harry _had_ , and, being Ron and Harry, had told her all about it. "But that was only because Cedric Diggory and the other Hufflepuff players are _very_ good, and because Malfoy is a reckless fool. Besides, _Harry_ never got hurt in Quidditch. On the one occasion he fell off his broom, well, _you_ were there, Albus, weren't you? And besides, that was the Turban's fault, not the game's."

" _Differing opinions_ on Quidditch notwithstanding," drawled Snape, "I must side with Miss Granger on the matter of the Triwizard, Albus." He turned to face Hermione and seethed: "that doesn't mean I _like_ you. You just happen to be defending the sensible, _pessimistic_ side for once."

"Anyway!" Hermione changed the subject. "All Tournaments aside, I think I know now who should have the Stone first, of the two of you."

" _Yes_?" the two Professors urged.

"Albus."

" _WHY?_ " Snape exploded.

"Because I remembered two things," she said. "First: you're planning to call _Harry's mother_. Didn't you consider he might want to be there too? Or, if you _must_ have privacy, that he might deserve to see her _first_?"

"…and the second reason?…" groaned Snape.

" _You're supposed to be brewing my Resurrection Potion_. Due tomorrow at 3, minus the final three ingredients, of course. _GET TO WORK!_ "


	48. Twice Reborn

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _I… really like this chapter. I can't really put my finger on why, but it felt good writing it. Perhaps it's because I finally give you payoff for the buildup to the Resurrection Ritual — though there's still one aspect of it that remain be shrouded in mystery till the next chapter. Will you like it as well, then? Well, the best way to tell me would be a review! (Hint, hint!) Favorites and Follows are good too, though._

 **Chapter XXXXV: _Twice Reborn_**

"Well! It looks like he's gone."

"Indeed," said Dumbledore, "indeed."

He moved to pick up the Stone.

"Wait a tick, Albus," she said teasingly, pushing it out of his reach.

"What?"

"Before you use it — and I will most assuredly leave you to do so in privacy — there's something I wanted to ask you. The reason I came in the first place."

"Ah, I see. Let's hear it then—"

"Please turn me into a snake."

"…I beg your pardon?"

"I'd like you to turn me into a snake please. Serpent. Ophidia. { _Snake._ } साँप. Are you following?"

"…not exactly."

"Well, I'd very much like to experience a snake's point of view until tomorrow. I — it was Tsh's idea, actually, isn't he just brilliant? The body you gave me _looks_ like my real one, but it's as fake as anything, in the end. There would be no harm in your Transfiguring it into just anything else, would there? As long as it's also animate."

"I… no, indeed not."

"As I said, it would be an interesting experiment. Transfiguring me into a real, organic snake might be risky, and ethically dodgy; and becoming an Animagus would be a bigger time commitment than I can afford for now… if it is even an option; I can't be quite sure my form would be a snake; because I understand it's based on your subconscious spirit-animal, so to speak — and though some people do, hence snake Animagi like Pierre-Roland Grillelangue, the 18th century French poet, _I_ do not in the least think of snakes as animals. So you see, this seems like a unique opportunity. … _Please_?"

"Well! …On balance, I see no reason why not!" decided the Headmaster. "Do you have a particular preference as to size… breed… coloration?"

She thought it over. There was a certain appeal to being a python, or an incredibly deadly viper; or even, perhaps, a Basilisk. But would that really be best? What about…

"A grass snake," she decided. "Of Tsh's size, or — slightly bigger, maybe. Oh, he'll be ever so surprised!"

"Very well then…" Dumbledore nodded, closing his eyes. "Grass snake, about thirty centimetres… hm… yes, I think I have it — we'll add the details afterwards, if you please… now let's be careful, let's do this proper and verbal, we don't want to disrupt the Locomotion spells… _Mutandis!_ "

In a flash of white energy, Hermione felt herself shrink and melt under the power of the Elder Wand. It was a strange experience, but not notably more upsetting than losing her body for the first time. It was much quicker, too.

She looked up at the giant with the white beard.

{… _Well then? How do I look?_ }

* * *

{ _Hello there, Tsh!_ } she greeted her friend, her now-fellow snake, upon entering the Library;

{ _Hermione Granger!_ } cheered the young snake. { _So it worked!_ }

{ _And very well, too!_ } she added. { _I have all the instincts for motion — sweet scales, I can't imagine how I would have reached the Library otherwise. And it took a lot of work, but Albus even managed the smell. Well, that is, I_ _have_ _the right odor, or I ought to._ _I_ _can't smell_ _you_ _any more than I could with the human form. Substitutiary Locomotion just doesn't_ _do_ _taste and smell. …So! What do you think?_ }

Curiously, Tsh got out his tongue and smelled her. He shifted closer to her, circling her body to get a good look.

{ _It's… true_ ,} he concluded _._ { _Lifelike, I think is the word. Very well done! …All the proper muscles, the right scale patterns for my kind of snakes…_ }

{ _Good!_ } she said. { _Very good! Anything else?_ }

{ _Hm…_ } Tsh mulled, looking her over from her muzzle to the tip of her tail. { _Your scales, they are very… smooth._ }

{ _Oh? Is it—_ }

{ _That's not a bad thing!_ } he hastily clarified. { _Very… not… bad. I. Good, I mean. It's very pretty. You look young and strong at the same time._ }

{ _Ah, alright,_ } she hissed in thanks. { _Erm, thank you, then. And… what of the odor? I told you, that was more of an experiment, Albus had to tweak the spell on the sp…_ }

{ _It's fantastic!_ } he cut her off, the tip of his tail wagging in rapture. {… _I, erm, sorry — but it's really very… good… pretty… scales, it's too bad you're_ _tongueless_ _or you'd see what I'm talking about…_ }

If it had been Ron Weasley, or Luna Lovegood, or any other taught Parselmouth that Tsh was speaking to, they'd doubtless have stuck out their tongue in outrage, trying to prove that they most definitely had one. To snakes and true Parselmouths however, the idiom was clear: 'tongueless', or _hhsssshhhh-tushh_ , was one who had no sense of taste or smell, which, for a snake, was more or less equivalent to being blind.

Being, unlike our reader for whose benefit we wrote out this clarification, a true Parselmouth, Hermione did not have to cut Tsh off in confusion. Thus, it may not seem that way to _you_ , but Tsh had continued talking seamlessly:

{ _Surely you'd be amazed to. You smell really… really nice. I mean, well, you're a_ _female_ _, so maybe you wouldn't be quite as — but—_ }

{ _Wait!_ } Hermione cut him off, and she would have blushed, had her body had any blood, or bare skin. { _Those… those aren't mating pheromones, are they?!_ }

{ _Oh, no, no, no, no,_ } Tsh shook his head — it was cute, how he had adopted some human mannerisms like that. { _I — no, I promise. It just smells really really nice for a regular smell, that's all. …Although, if you did get a mating smell and it was anything like_ _this_ _— golly._ }

{ _Alriiight…_ } Hermione hissed slowly. { _Er, do remember that this is just artificial, alright? It's just magic. I probably wouldn't smell like that if I was_ _really_ _a snake._ }

{ _Maybe,_ } answered Tsh, { _but it's still really nice. Hmmm._ }

Hermione really, really didn't know what to do. It seemed that in his effort to turn her into a sort of platonic ideal of a snake, Albus had ended up making her into some sort of… of serpentine _bombshell_.

And as she'd told the Portrait of Headmaster Vulpus, she was fond of Tsh, but absolutely not in _that_ way. Someone like Ron, or Harry, or Maximilian, was much closer to what she could imaginably call a romantic partner. And even then, she certainly thought they were handsome, but she didn't actually _fancy_ any of them. She felt simultaneously too young and too old to be playing at romance. And anyway, she didn't have _time_ for those sorts of distractions.

She was not, however, from what was going on around her, oblivious to the fact that she was a clear minority there. There had been the drama with Draco Malfoy and his Pansy recently; farther back, she remembered something about Crabbe getting a mystery girlfriend; her roommate Sally-Anne would not shut _up_ about dating one Terry Boot, from Ravenclaw;… and she was pretty sure Ginny was secretly sweet on Harry. She even had an inkling that in the years before his sister's death, Albus had had an interest in Gellert Grindelwald greater than just friendship — though that was sort of in a league of its own, considering who was involved.

Yet sooner would she have believed the Basilisk had a scandalous affair with the Giant Squid, rather than think that Tsh — Tsh whom she had seen as an _egg_ — had developed an interest in the fair sex.

{ _Tsh, forgive me asking, but are you… looking to mate?_ }

{ _I, er,_ } the surprised snake stammered, { _yes!… no… well, more than just mate. I… would like a_ _female friend_ _._ }

{ _A female friend?_ } Hermione repeated without understanding. { _…Tsh, I'm definitely your friend, and lest you forget I_ _am_ _female._ }

{ _No,_ } Tsh strained, { _not just… a friend female… I… the human word? Female-friend, together? Scales! If only I could pronounce— like in the books? Female-friend?_ }

{ _Oh!_ } she suddenly realized. { _You mean a_ }"girlfriend"{ _?_ }

{ _YES!_ } he said, relieved. { _I… have read a lot about them. In… story-books?_ }

{ _Novels?_ }

{ _Yes._ }

{ _Well… that truly is a nice thought,_ } she said. { _Though I do… see your problem. Hm. There aren't many grass-snake girls nearby, are there? And probably fewer still who share your intelligence._ }

{ _Yes,_ } he confirmed, wistful. { _The only clever females I know, they are — well — my sisters._ }

{ _…oh._ }

{ _Some do it, of course,_ } he continued, { _but the human books say mating with one's sister is — bad. For the offspring._ }

{ _Yes, it is. Also: ick, ick, ew._ }

{ _That is true,_ } he remarked. { _The human books also seem to imply humans find it off-putting,_ _disgusting_ _. I… do not understand that part, to be quite honest. My sisters may not be the shiniest scales around, and I understand that I_ _should_ _not take them for mates, but they are not_ _ugly_ _… are they?_ }

{ _No, no, it's more of a…_ } she struggled to explain. { _It's a… general… taboo. It's like how few intelligent beings eat their dead. There's not necessarily a_ _practical_ _reason_ _not_ _to, it's just… not_ _done_ _._ }

{ _Ah_. _I think I understand._ }

After a moment of quiet thinking, Hermione felt a rush of mischievousness and poked Tsh's muzzle with her tail, jolting him out of his reverie.

{ _Hey! Wake up!_ }

{ _Yes? What?_ } hissed the surprised snake.

{ _You know…_ } she explained, { _I do enjoy talking to you — and I_ _will_ _get you a female-friend, I promise — but I won't stay a snake forever, so I'd rather do something more inherently_ _snakey_ _with my time than just sit and chat. Okay?_ }

{ _Of-Of course!_ } Tsh said with evident worry. { _I'm — sorry I wasted your t—_ }

{ _It's alright, Tsh, quite alright,_ } she was quick to reassure him. { _So. What do you suggest? …_ _You_ _'re the real snake out of the two of us. What do you do when you are neither reading nor resting?_ }

{ _Well, I ea—_ }

{ _Food's out. Tongueless, porcelain body? Remember?_ }

{ _Ah, true,_ } he apologized, { _forgive me, I had forgotten. …Wait! I know!_ }

{ _Yes?_ }

{ _Hermione Granger — do you know how to swim?_ }

* * *

Lucius Malfoy rather liked his expensive silver pocket-watch. Emblazoned with a snake and a peacock (his two favorite animals), enchanted to never break or stop until it was truly beyond help, and instantly adjusting to the local hour wherever he traveled, it had been one of his craftswoman mother's finest gifts. Yet even with so fine a timepiece, there was something overwhelmingly unnerving in being reduced to checking it every other minute. And not only was every further moment of delay one more moment of waiting for his amputation — hardly a lovely prospect, even if it would be cancelled soon enough by the Flamels' largesse — but this wait depended on the whims of a _mudblood girl_.

And worst of all were the people he had to wait _with_.

There was a Slytherin boy, Douglas Wilkes. Old Orson's son; of fine stock, then, but raised to all sorts of rubbish ideas by his softie of an aunt Charity. He _was_ faithful to his henchman role in Slytherin House, one had to give him that, of course; indeed, Draco had mentioned him in his letters, as one of the most active freelance minions currently active in Hogwarts. But his presence here in the Potions Laboratory at this hour, ostensibly waiting for the same occasion as himself, clearly indicated the boy was a two-timing traitor who was alright with working for _Granger_. He was also passing the time by eating some of those infernal Muggle sweets, the one whose wrapping went _crsh!KRSH!crsh!_ the moment you touched it. This was the first time Lucius had to bear it for several minutes, and it had already climbed near the top of his list of most hated noises — just below his sister-in-law's cackle.

There was Mad-Eye Moody, that infernal Knight of the Phoenix, who _would not stop_ staring at him and at Snape in quick succession, in that oh-so-creepy way of his.

There was also _Professor Albus Percival Brian Wulfric Dumbledore,_ who was, thankfully, ignoring him in favor of tinkering with some bizarre golden instrument. Now, he _would_ have said something about the meddlesome old coot having finally gone off the deep end if he thought that sort of Muggle toy would help; indeed, he would have written the _Daily Prophet_ about it and had it plastered throughout Britain; but Douglas Wilkes then told the Headmaster something that implied the device would _summon Gellert Grindelwald_ — in light of which Lucius elected to keep prudently silent.

And finally, the young sallow-faced hobgoblin, Severus Snape, standing in the middle of his lair of a Potions Laboratory. Snape was working on a fiery-looking potion, which bubbled and sparked inside its immense cauldron. Periodically, the Potions Master would stir the liquid with a large black ladle or add in some eldritch powders and herbs that, despite the _Outstanding_ he had obtained for his Potions N.E.W.T., Lucius Malfoy could not identify. In a glaring insult to common sense, mist-like flumes that smelled of blood and sulfur permeated the room _except_ for the area directly above the Cauldron. Shaking off his initial confusion, Malfoy figured out that it must have been spelled with some variation of the Bubble-Head Charm — though whether for the benefit of the brewer, user, or the potion itself, it was impossible to tell.

At long last, half an hour late, a small porcelain snake strutted in; and that snake, considering with what warmth Dumbledore greeted it, was apparently what was left of Hermione Granger.

"Sorry, everyone," said the Hermione snake, in, shockingly, a human voice. "I got distracted talking to the Giant Squid. Did you know he's telepathic? One more thing to add to the next edition of _Hogwarts: A History_. But I ramble."

"Wait," Dumbledore inquired. "I understand that you and young Tsh left the Library for the Great Lake yesterday evening. Did you truly spend the entire night, and most of this day, chatting with the Giant Squid?"

"He is _very_ talkative," she stressed. "Also I don't need to sleep in this body. But anyway. I believe we are ready to begin. Let's go over everyone's role first, shall we? Professor Snape, you shall handle the spoken parts of the ritual, as we said."

Snape gave a sort of moan or grunt that was vaguely affirmative, not taking his eyes off the gleaming potion.

"Mr Moody, do you have mum's bone?"

"Aye!" said Moody, fishing a white femur out of one of his many invisible pockets. "Taken in the Muggle's sleep, regrown, Obliviated her of the whole thing. Talk about _unknowingly_! Heheh!"

"Good," she said, business-like, as if a disgusting old wizard hadn't just discussed performing non-consensual surgery on her mother — one had to prioritize. "Mr Malfoy… you know your part. You will find the ritual knife on Professor Snape's desk."

"I…" Lucius swallowed, uneasy. "Yes, I see it."

"…Well, pick it up!…"

Gingerly — for the enchanted knife looked frighteningly sharp, though he also knew it was charmed to cause no pain — the former Dark Wizard obeyed.

"And Douglas," she finished, "you have the enemy's blood?"

"Right here," he confirmed, presenting a sealed, opaque vial.

"Albus, you will carry me into the Cauldron, please. …Oh, and do cast a preemptive Modesty Charm over the cauldron; unlike the Transfigured one, I don't imagine this body will come with any clothes…"

"True," concurred the Headmaster. "Very sensible. That would have been—"

He glanced at Snape.

"—awkward. Well then. _Pudicitiam!_ "

The fluffy white clouds of the Charm coalesced over the Cauldron, where they remained, knowing, from Dumbledore's uniquely skillful casting, to wait for their target to materialize, rather than flicker out of existence as soon as they found none.

"And let me summon Gellert—"

"I hope you don't expect that _man_ to take part in the _ritual?!_ " harrumphed Malfoy.

"Of _course_ not," Hermione huffed back. "Or else, I should think I would have mentioned him when I mapped out everyone's parts earlier. He's just a spectator, as a personal favor from Albus, I understand. The poor man—"

" _Poor man!_ "

"— Lucius, don't make fun of my inner goodness, you owe your freedom to it — the poor man doesn't get to see much powerful magic anymore, these days. What harm can his being here do?"

"Thank you again," said the newly-materialized Grindelwald. "I see that everything is ready… Please, don't let me delay you."

"Alright," she said decisively. "Let us begin."

Everyone took a deep breath; all but Snape and Hermione took a step backwards from the cauldron. Moody handed Snape the bone.

"Bone of the mother, unknowingly given… you will renew your child," the Potions Master recited, solemn, as he dropped the femur into the potion.

The liquid turned a poisonous shade of blue and lost its electric sparkle. As anticipated.

"Flesh of the servant, willingly sacrificed…"

An anxious Lucius Malfoy slowly walked to the side of cauldron. Then, mindful not to touch the burning metal, he held forward his left arm over the potion, and cut it clean off with his right; to the man's credit, his face only showed the barest sign of a wince, soon morphed by his Slytherin habits into a sort of disgusted sneer bordering on a snarl.

"…you will revive your mistress."

The potion's hue changed again, this time to a bloody red. Right on cue, Douglas gave Snape the vial, which he uncorked through a bit of wandless magic (showoff) before pouring its contents into the potion.

"And _blood_ of the _enemy_ …" Snape finished, "you shall resurrect your _foe_."

A rising note, like an acoustic defect, erupted from the cauldron as the Resurrection Potion turned a glowing white. _Secrets of the Darkest Art_ didn't properly describe that phase — perhaps it was that the Dark Wizard writer hated to speak of the Light for any reason? — and they were all caught by surprise by the blinding flash. All, that was, but Hermione Granger, whose eyes were just Transfigured dots on a Transfigured bodies, Hermione Granger who saw through the same arcane processes that gave sight to portraits and statues… Hermione Granger who saw, quite clearly, as Douglas Wilkes _lifted_ Grindelwald's remote-projector, and, pushing Dumbledore away, _dumped_ it into the Potion with a rather silly splash.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

Those words were screamed in more or less the same tone and cadence, although at slightly different times, by Albus Dumbledore, Hermione Granger, Severus Snape, and Gellert Grindelwald.

Mad-Eye Moody, meanwhile, had skipped the questioning and tackled the Slytherin boy to the ground with some nonverbal spell. He had then begun using every revealing spell he knew on the struggling minion.

Dumbledore did _something_ to suddenly clear away all the fumes in a blast of wind, and, having had a bit of time to adapt to the strong lighting coming from the Potion, the mages got a good look at the situation.

" _Sir!_ " Douglas was protesting. "Stop trying to undo — I'm not in disguise, alright? I'm really Douglas Wilkes, I swear! Ggh!"

"I believe him," Snape told Moody. "I know his manners. Let him go."

"Maybe he _is_ the Wilkes tot," grumbled Moody, "but I'll tell you one thing, he's a _spy!_ "

"Of _course_ I'm a spy!…" cried Douglas. "It's my _job_! …But anyway, it didn't _work_ , so just, er, let me go and carry on, alright?"

"What _were_ you trying to do?" Hermione asked ruefully. "And _why_?! …Moody, let him go. _Go on._ "

"'s your funeral," the wizard grumbled in his nonexistent beard as he let the contrite Slytherin climb to his feet.

"Well, _obviously,_ " he said, "I was trying to highjack the Resurrection to give Lord Grindelwald's projection a physical form here in England."

"…Monroe put you up to this, didn't she?" Hermione guessed.

"Well you can her that I _do not want to escape!_ " the Grindelwald projection shouted at Douglas. "And I am _not_ , nor ever _was_ , a _LORD!_ "

"Noted, sir," he said in a small voice.

"Douglas, why didn't you tell me you were working for Monroe now?" asked Hermione.

"What do you think?" chuckled Douglas, producing a bit of licorice from his side pocket. "Lady Monroe paid me extra to _not_ tell you."

"Mr Wilkes," Snape reprimanded, " _beyond_ the _fact_ that you have been _caught_ — which is in itself a disgrace — let me tell you this was an _extremely foolish plan_. This potion is meant for somewhat-incarnate beings, not disembodied phantoms, for one thing; especially not ones who _do_ have a body elsewhere on Earth; and _furthermore_ , I believe it was quite _plain_ , from the last few ingredients, that this was a _personalized_ potion — one which would have had little effect on anyone but Miss Granger. Ten points from Slytherin, you rash-thinking _dolt_!"

"Fair, fair," the boy said in a jaded voice. "But then, I knew the plan was rubbish, you know. Monroe didn't, that's all. I still got paid for this. All licorice delivered in advance. And this about concludes by contract with the Hufflepuff, Miss, so I can go right back to working for you in earnest, whenever you need me for anything. Like Professor Snape said, dumping the projector in the Potion didn't actually do much of anything… except splash a bit of it out of the cauldron, I guess. It should be fine. Carry on. …I'll just go."

"…Alright," Snape called as Douglas walked out of the Potions classroom, "you may have three points back to Slytherin for pragmatic cunning. But _no more_ , are we clear?"

"Thank you, Professor!…" came the distant reply before Douglas's footsteps faded away completely.

"Very Slytherin, that boy," Dumbledore remarked. "And not in an unpleasant way…"

"We like to think so. …Right then," said Snape, eying the potion, which was still blazing white. "Where were we…"

" _Rise again,_ " Dumbledore prompted.

"Ah, yes. This is your part, isn't it? Pick up the girl, will you, Headmaster?"

Dumbledore gently picked up Hermione's snake body and gently eased her into the bubbling white potion, as Snape intoned the final part of his ritual chant:

"… _the Parselmouth of Gryffindor shall rise again!_ "


	49. Business

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _I'm sorry this one took slightly longer than usual. I'm… not entirely sure what happened to delay it; but even now I'm not entirely happy with the end result. Though you might be, being a very kind audience from what I've seen. As always, please review, and thanks to those who have already done so or otherwise shown their support through Follows and Favorites!_

 **Chapter XXXXVI: _Business_**

"… _Parselmouth of Gryffindor_?! _…_ " she repeated once the steam had settled down. "That's a _rubbish_ name!"

"It _is_ what they call you," Professor Snape said, defending his choice. "The ritual demanded a title be used, and this felt more appropriate than _the crazy, scary girl_."

"Which is…"

"The other thing that they call you, yes," Snape deadpanned.

"I can't imagine why," muttered Lucius Malfoy, who had dipped his stump in the jar of Elixir-augmented Regrowing Potion and was now waiting out the few minutes for his lost limb to regrow.

"Lucius, no sarcasm or you don't get that peacock."

"But… you promised!"

"Perhaps _I_ promised, but _you_ bribed, stole, maimed, murdered, and generally deserve a paid vacation in Dementorland. Stop questioning _my_ trustworthiness."

"…Forgive me," the businessman grumbled.

"…Well!" Grindelwald said, feigning cheerfulness. "At any rate, a stupendous display! I congratulate all participants, truly I do. Especially you, Professor Snape… a stunning marriage of instinct and discipline like yours, it will take you far among Potioneers."

"I'm afraid…" Snape hesitantly replied, "I'm afraid I have more or less burnt those bridges, long ago."

"Nonsense, Snape," laughed Grindelwald, "nonsense. You are young, very young… plenty of time to Conjure more bridges in the next hundred years, eh?"

Hermione, who had climbed halfway out of the cauldron and was now sitting on its thick rim as if on a very unusual bench, blinked in surprise. Snape, young? Why he looked — she would have said he looked to be at least 45 years old, more, perhaps — _young_? But then, yes, he must be, if he had been childhood friends with Lily Potter; she had read that Lily Potter had been 21 when the Turban had killed her; that would have made her 34 today. 34. Professor Snape was 34, or nearly so? Who'd have thought?

"A hundred years!" Snape repeated, eyes wide in an unreadable expression. "A hundred years to live…"

"Of course!" Grindelwald chuckled, although somewhat more darkly. "I was a man already, a hundred years ago… and those hundred years have changed me, oh yes — but for the better, I think."

" _No doubt,_ " said Snape in a low and threatening voice.

"That century," Grindelwald continued, "may do you good as well, Snape. There is a darkness and bitterness in your aura… which I hope you can find the wisdom to cure yourself of. In time."

"I—"

"…Wait. Wait," Moody said suddenly, cutting Snape's answer short. "…Should _she_ be… purple?!…"

Hermione choked.

"Me? _Purple?!_ What—"

She looked down at her newly-recovered hands.

Where a pale, pinkish complexion should have met her gaze, she did, indeed, find a vaguely mauve hue. Now, it was not truly purple skin; but she looked about as purple as ordinary Europeans were pinkish. And that was very concerning. Especially since her veins seemed to _glow_ purple like some extravagant neons.

"Okaaay…" she said, forcing a smile. "Must be some weird side-effect of the ritual… I'm sure it'll wear off in no time at all!…"

"I wouldn't be quite so sure," said Dumbledore, frowning. "This is dangerous magic we have tinkered with today. Let me cast a few diagnostic charms on you…"

Without bothering to open his mouth, Dumbledore waved and twirled the Elder Wand around her. Then, as quickly as he'd started, he stopped and stepped back.

"Oh, dear."

" _What_?" she pressed, before muttering: "Merlin's beard, Douglas, if this is your fault—"

"You're not in any danger," Dumbledore reassured her, "not at all. Your condition is stable. But… heavens. It seems you are no longer quite… _human_."

"You mean, physically?" she asked. "Because philosophically, I don't think—"

"No, no, neither," he explained. "Rather, it is magically that your essence has been… mingled. Most strange."

"Oooh…" she gaped as the explanation downed on hr. " _That_ 's why… uh. Well. Looks like I… goofed."

"The blood!" Snape said, snapping his fingers. "It was the blood, yes? I did think the brew reacted strangely — this — you momentous _imbecile_! This was not _human_ blood!?"

"WHAT?" said quite a few other people in the room.

"Er… no?…" Hermione shrugged. "The book didn't specify the blood had to be a certain species. I went through the list of my enemies; the most easily available — and the one who'd come closest to truly killing me — happened to be…"

" _Orga_ ," Dumbledore finished, still shocked. "The Acromantula. You asked me where I had imprisoned Orga and her mother — oh, my stars… But this geol was not unguarded…! It was protected! I—"

"Yes," Hermione said. "But the protections were mostly for keeping the prisoners inside, not preventing forced _entry_. And Douglas _is_ quite good at what he does, when he applies himself."

"Three points to Slytherin," said Snape without even looking in her direction.

"I see," Dumbledore breathed, lightly tracing a purple vein down her wrist. "The luminescent blue blood of the magi-arachnids met the red blood of men and women — result: a radiant periwinkle… The biological structure, unaltered, but the magic properties were transferred… yes, it does make sense, in theory…"

"Does that mean I have an Acromantula's magic now?" she asked with palpable excitement.

"Yes," said Dumbledore, at the same time that Grindelwald said "No".

"What is it, Gellert?"

"Do not give the girl false ideas. 'A drop of blood does not a monster make.'"

"That is not what that proverb _means_."

"It is now," said Grindelwald, flippant."My point is, Miss Granger, your _blood_ has the magic of an Acromantula's _blood_. It should allow you to breathe with ease even scarce or poisoned air, and conserve itself more efficiently if you are injured; for an Acromantula cannot be bled to death; the blood repairs the vessel's wall almost instantly; natural Transfiguration, I studied it, once. You will, of course, become immune to Acromantula venom, and perhaps other venoms and poisons also; though don't go about kissing Nundus, to be clear, I mean only weaker sorts. …And of course, you have the glow, obscured in true specimens by the thick chitin."

"In so many words, Gellert," Dumbledore frowned, "she shall have an Acromantula's magic."

"After so many years," chuckled the old Dark Wizard, "still you make the same mistakes, Albus… You jump to absolutes. Non, old dunderhead, she shall not have _an Acromantula's magic_. It's not all in the blood, you know! She won't have the spell-resistance, the supernatural strength… let alone the ability to spin silk."

"Oh. Well. It's still not bad, is it?" Hermione said, once again smiling. "Glowing purple gives you a _style_ , anyway. Oh, look! The light refracts through the mists of the Modesty Charm, it gives off a lovely shade of lavender, now…"

"Yes, speaking of that…" Dumbledore noted, "shouldn't you get dressed?"

She shrugged.

"I don't know, actually. Modesty Charms are quite long-lasting, I have read; especially one cast by _your_ wand, I should suppose. Knowing you. And I think it's very comfortable, as long as th weather allows it. …Yes, I think I'll stay as I am for now."

Snape reddened.

" _Miss Granger!_ " he roared. "You will _respect_ the Hogwarts dress code, or I shall be forced to deduct _points!_ "

" _Actually,_ " said Hermione, drumming her fingers along the side of the Cauldron, "today is Saturday. We do not have to follow the dress code in the week-end, or have you forgotten? Students are free to wear school robes, indoor robes, sportswear, or even Muggle clothing if it suits their fancy. You must have noticed all the Weasleys wear trousers and jumpers when not in class? Ands _surely_ you _cannot_ have missed Luna Lovegood."

"That may be," argued Snape, "but the question then is _how_ to dress. Not _whether_. You are in violation of the Modesty Decree of 1567, which clearly states that deliberately immodest apparel will _not_ be t—"

"Professor, this is literally called the _Modesty_ Charm," she bit back. "How could you possibly classify it as immodest?! And since we're talking about rules, are we forgetting the 1883 ban on greasy hair?"

"Very good point," Dumbledore said, playing along, perhaps enjoying the flabbergasted looks Grindelwald and Malfoy were giving Hermione and Snape. "What of it then, Severus? A budding rebel, are we?"

"Some would say you're headed down a dark path, Snapey," Moody added. "…Oh wait! Bwahahah!"

"Really?" said Snape, baring his teeth. "But then, Headmaster, are we to overlook the Ministry's 1921 regulations on exceedingly long beards?"

"Wasn't that one repealed in '49?" Moody asked.

"I do believe so," Dumbledore chortled.

"Not quite," Hermione ruled. "But they _did_ add an amendment concerning eccentric schoolteachers."

"I may neither confirm nor deny involvement," Dumbledore commented with just the smuggest grin.

"…I should go," said Lucius Malfoy, abrupt. "Good day."

He strode out as haughtily as a blackmailed politician could possibly do so while holding one of his hands inside a jar of sloshing life-potion, occasionally splashing drops of it on the ground to add to the various potions residue littering the Potions Laboratory.

"I should probably depart as well," Grindelwald added, brisk. He pressed a button on his end, and, with the connection cut off, his three-dimensional reflection in Hogwarts vanished.

"Rather brisk fellows, aren't they?" Hermione commented. "I — _uh_!?"

An antique harpsichord.

She shook her head.

An antique harpsichord… had appeared, embedded where the Cauldron and her legs should have been?!

"Er… Albus…?"

Then the harpsichord disappeared without warning, as if it had never been there at all.

"What?"

"No, nothing," she waved off the concerned Headmaster. "For a moment there I — oh, I think I'm simply tired. I'll just go tell Ron and Harry and everyone that I'm okay, and that they're not to worry, and… oh, Albus, I _know_ we already skipped one because of my death and everything, but could we push back the Occlumency training again? Say, tomorrow, same time? I just want to go to sleep."

"Of course!" Dumbledore answered, "of course, it is quite possible that a ritual such as this would take a toll on your strength, especially in light of the unexpected transformation you went through."

"Thanks," she said with a friendly smile. "And all of you, thanks for all the help. Good bye!"

* * *

Hermione followed her plan and had a long, restful night's sleep. She relished in it. There was, of course, much to be said for the advantages of not sleeping at all, which she had tested for several nights in a row thanks to her porcelain body; but sleep gave you a time to pause, rest, and think. A stretch of six to ten hours where all you had to do was let your body slowly shut down and gaze inwards, looking back at the day's events and discoveries.

And planning out the next's.

Hermione, at this point, could hardly do without plotting, scheming or planning; much like Albus, she could no longer get through a day without _planning it out_. (Planning, of course, had a particular significance and importance when one used a Time-Turner, which demanded a strict schedule be adhered to for spacetime's sake.)

Thus, when Hermione woke up, she had a very good idea — a plan — for what she needed to do that morning.

First, she'd gone to sleep glancing at a certain tin box on her bedside table. Since the age of seven, she had used this box to store any lost coin or banknote which she happened to get a hold of, be it through finding it or having it given to her for her birthday by a relative. As of late, she had been overusing it in an attempt to store her cut of the _Other Paper_ 's profits; it was, theoretically, nothing; just a percent of the net gain, with the rest divided between just Dobby and Quentin; but the paper had been doing so well that even after a reasonably-sized _Engorgio_ enchantment, it was threatening to overflow at any moment. Not to mention the safety issue; her main Hogwarts enemy, Draco Malfoy, may not have had any need to steal from her, but she couldn't be sure this would always be so, and she had better things to do than create her own protections for her stash.

The point was, she needed a Gringotts Vault, and rather sooner than later. This would, besides, be a very good reason to talk a bit with some Goblins and see if there was anything she could do for them through Cornelius Fudge.

She drafted up an explanatory note which she left on Harry's bed in place of his Invisibility Cloak, wrapped the tin box up in the invisible fabric, and made off for a certain corridor on the First Floor which she had learnt of from Sirius.

On the right side of that corridor, propped against the wall, was a sort of large black cupboard adorned with golden flourishes. A Vanishing Cabinet, possibly the most recklessly dangerous passageway out of Hogwarts, which led directly to Diagon Alley. With no hesitation, she climbed into the Cabinet and closed the door behind her. She fel the self being Vanished and then reconstituted, and stumbled out of the other Cabinet, in…

…a sinister antique shop?

" _What are you doin' here?!_ " screamed a hunched man with oily white hair, rushing out from behind a heap of dusty items.

Calmly, she climbed out of the Cabinet.

"…and in _this_ … state of undress, at that!…" the wizard added, more uncertain.

"Ah," she said with not-entirely-genuine confidence in her voice. "Mr Borgin, I presume. Or is it Mr Burke?"

"Borgin, Charles Borgin," he said mechanically. "Caractacus Burke is dead, he's been for many years."

"Oh? …How did this happen?" she asked.

"Occupational hazard," Borgin shrugged with a small but distinctly evil grin. "Somehow he came home with one of _our_ hairbrushes."

"Ah, it was poisoned, wasn't it?"

"Not quite," said Borgin, the grin getting wider and meaner. "It ate him."

"…ate him?"

"Ate him," Borgin repeated with gleaming eyes.

Hermione thought about it.

"…Was the brush sentient?" she asked.

Had he been seated, it was clear that Charles Borgin would have fallen off said seat.

"What? Why? Why did you say that?!…" he stammered.

"Because I want to know if it had a motive for the murder in rebelling against his slavedriver?…" she explained as if to an idiot. "That much was obvious, I think."

"Little girls aren't supposed to say that!" Borgin struggled to explain, losing his composure. "I — _no one_ is supposed to say that!"

"What should I have said then?" Hermione asked accusingly.

" _Nothing_!" said Borgin. "You're just meant to be creeped out, gulp, and then shakily state your purpose! I've tried this on thirty-seven different people, not one broke the mold, not even Lucius Malfoy!…"

"Oh, you've met my pet."

"Your _what?!…_ Oh…" Borgin took a few steps backwards and rested his hand on his counter. "Oh _God_ … you're _her_ , aren't you…"

"Who?"

"The Granger girl… the Parselmouth of Gryffindor…" answered the Dark Wizard.

"A-ha!" Hermione noted with interest. "So they _do_ call me that!"

"Is it _accurate_?" Borgin asked shakily.

"You bet."

"…Eeh," wheezed Borgin, readjusting his dingy bowtie and straightening himself. "Well. It would be uncouth to ask how you got into my shop, I imagine, or why you are… dressed in this manner."

"My, what an accurate imagination you have," she said with a grin.

"Or why you are glowing purple."

"Quite."

"So," he said, "what is your business here, Miss Granger?"

"Mostly just passing through," she answered. "Although, if you should happen to have any reasonably-priced Slytherin heirlooms…"

"Aah," nodded Borgin. "You would seek to weasel out potential secrets through Parseltongue, eh? Well, not much at the moment, Miss Granger, not much at the moment, but I'll keep a lookout if you give me a little something in advance."

* * *

After a few dreary minutes of debating a suitable price with Borgin, she walked out a Galleon lighter into Knockturn Alley. That chance encounter had been as useful as it had been mysterious; that was to say, mildly so on both accounts (she could have shopped for Parsel-activated artifacts some other time, and it was easy enough to figure out the Cabinet had been stolen by, or bequeathed to, Borgin from its original Diagon-dwelling owner at some point since the Senior Marauders' days). She quickly put it behind her, walking briskly along Knockturn Alley and into Diagon, trying to ignore the feeling of the rough and unkempt stones on her bare feet, and the chill on her sides. Wearing only a Modesty Charm was all fine and good in comfy, heated Hogwarts, but it was not really appropriate for a city outing in the middle of September… though she steeled herself by remembering that it did serve a greater purpose for her visit today.

When she walked into Gringotts, she was instantly the center of attention — among the Goblins; at this hour there were only few human customers, and they all had better things to do than gawk at one another. At some point since her First-Year, she had read that she'd been quite wrong on her first visit: Goblins did not actually like fussy politeness, but instead valued being honest, blunt and to-the-point. Thus, she dispensed with greetings and bows and all the silly routine, and instead walked straight to a teller's desk and said:

"I would like to register a new account, please."

"You want Blordak," said the Goblin with a faint Gobbledegook accent. "In charge of new accounts."

With a claw, the teller pointed at a pudgy Goblin in his thirties, who had astonishingly well-groomed blond hair and a surprisingly small nose. He was probably half-human, she thought; and therefore, valuable material to ask about wizard/goblin relationships. She smiled as she approached him.

"Hermione Granger. I would like to register a new account."

"Good," said Blordak, beckoning a ledger to him with a wave of his hand. "New blood?"

"Yes," she answered without missing a beat.

"High-security, or low-security?" he asked.

"…Er…" she hesitated.

"Look," Blordak explained, looking up with his black Goblin eyes and frowning at her. "What I mean is, Dragon, or no Dragon?!"


	50. The Violin of Gringotts

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Wherein Hermione saves dragons, steals dining implements, and gets a new pair of slippers!… You know these stories where everything starts logical, but the endgame is an absolutely ridiculous tally? This isn't that story. This story is ridiculous all the way. …Or is it? I can never tell. Anyway! Thanks again to all readers, and particularly those who outwardly show their support through Favorites, Follows, and, especially, Reviews! Please consider joining that merry jamboree if you haven't yet!_

 **Chapter XXXXVII: _The Violin of Gringotts_**

"Over _forty years_ , I have helped run this bank, Blordak! Forty years. And never. Never! Have I seen something like _this_!"

"I… understand, Bogrod. I…"

Bogrod was an old Goblin with slightly greenish skin, a pair of glasses framed in gold, and a look of crankiness only matched by Argus Filch on his best days. Being apparently the senior Gringotts teller at the moment, he had been the one to intervene when Blordak had begun desperately calling for help.

"As for you, the human!" continued Bogrod, turning towards Hermione. "If you think you can come in here under false pretenses, and attempt _robbery—_ "

"I am not robbing anyone," Hermione protested. "I merely—"

" _Get. Off. Our! DRAGON!"_

* * *

"Human, I have handled cross-species disputes in Gringotts for sixty years now. And never. Never! Have I seen something like— what is that?"

"Oh? Just something I picked up in the mess, Mr Gnarlok; but I think I know who it belongs t—"

" _Was this from the Lestrange Vault?_ "

"Er, yes, I suppose it must have b—"

" _THIIIIIIEEEEFFFFF!_ "

* * *

"Human, I have been the Lord President of Gringotts for seventy years. I have seen many _odd_ things. Many _outrageous_ things. But _this—!_ "

"Well, I'm sorry, _Mister_ Regnast," Hermione huffed primly, "but if there is one thing I will not tolerate, I mean, beyond cruelty to sentients, it's cruelty to animals."

" _That is no excuse to rob the Lestrange Vault!_ " growled the Lord President, his claw-like nails digging into his desk — which, interestingly, showed many identical claw-marks.

"Oh do shut up with that, already!" Hermione said in exasperation. "It's _your_ bloody fault keeping a Dragon with fire powerful enough to _melt_ through a vault _right next to that vault!_ I mean _honestly!_ What did you suppose was going to happen!?"

"Well we didn't _suppose_ that a crazy _witch_ ," Regnast spat out the word, "was going to go _tickle_ the beast! _Not_ that this is an excuse for _stealing_ from the open vault. _And,_ for the record! The Dragon's fire! Should! _Not!_ Have had this capability!"

"No?"

" _No!_ We had its and every other Dragon's fire _tested_ on the vault doors long ago, you fool! Who do you think we are? Wizards?"

"On the vault _doors_ ," Hermione repeated snidely.

"That is what I said. Stop wasting _time_!"

"—but not, I expect," she said, continuing her thought, "on the vault's stone _walls._ "

To this credit, the Lord President Regnast did not start screaming, as Senior Teller Bogrod and Interspecies Relation Spokesgoblin Gnarlok had previously. He _did_ , however, bury his claws frighteningly deep into his desk. And stop breathing for a minute or three.

Then he muttered something in Gobbledegook which, again, made a lumbering guard seize her by the wrist and drag her through tunnel after tunnel, towards some other office, belonging to someone even higher-ranking. It was getting boring.

…Although, who _was_ higher than the Lord President of Gringotts in Goblin society, she wondered? Perhaps at some point they'd rise so high they'd come back out the other way and she'd be dragged to the shack of the one Goblin tasked with shoveling the Troll dung. Wouldn't that be fun.

* * *

"Well then, human. We have been reigning on the Goblin Nation for seventy-two years, and never—"

"Oh, right, Goblin King," she said to herself. "Should have known."

The Goblin King — Ragnuk VII, if she wasn't mistaken — was surprisingly simple for a King. For one thing, he wasn't gigantic like the Alizor King. He was also not wearing fancy robes with white mink trimming, or holding a scepter, or standing on a throne. Instead he had a very normal office (that was to say, by Gringotts standards; the collection of axes on the walls would have been somewhat out-of-place in a normal office, full stop), and wore ordinary Goblin business robes.

He also looked very jaded with his life, as opposed to haughty and majestic.

But to be fair, be he _did_ wear a crown, and _did_ speak of himselves in plural, so Hermione figured she shouldn't be too harsh; so she held back a scalding remark and let him finish his little speech.

"Y-You presume to interrupt us?" said the King.

"I didn't _presume_ , sir," Hermione answered, "I _succeeded_."

"True. True!" said Ragnuk VII, and there was something appreciative in his voice. "So you have attempted to steal from Gringotts, they say?"

"I didn't attempt," she corrected. "But I did succeed. Entirely by accident, you understand. This is the thing in question."

She held up a golden cup which she could have sworn was the mythical, lost Cup of Hufflepuff. The King raised an eyebrow.

"Helga's Grail?" he recognized. "An odd choice. You break into Gringotts, but it is a human-made thing that you steal? We would have a right to be offended; and here we speak for all Goblins, rather than our self."

"I'm not a thief!" Hermione asserted. "If anything, it's the Lestranges. Their family has no legal claim to a Hufflepuff heirloom; believe me, the Hufflepuffs are probably the only pureblood family even the most diehard Slytherin bigots would rather marry a mudblood than interbreed with. I mean — could you get me some shoes?"

"…We're sorry?"

"What?"

"We do not understand," the King explained, "is this a new human idiom we do not know about? To get one… some shoes? Did we hear this correctly?"

"No, no," Hermione laughed, "sorry for the non-sequitur, I just mean, do you have some shoes I could borrow? Goblin shoes will do, I could resize them with magic. I came here barefoot as you can see; unclothed, even; but I didn't count with Gringotts' floors being so _cold._ "

"What did you expect?" chuckled the King. "We are in Goblin lands. Underground tunnels, and made of stone. This is not the surface, human!… But if we are not being rude, we would ask; why _did_ you come unclothed?"

"Precisely to prove I had the best of intentions and was most definitely _not_ a thief," Hermione blurted out, relieved to finally have an opportunity to explain it. "Funny how _that_ worked out. But I hoped to avoid any trouble this way. What thief would put themselves at such a disadvantage? You can't slip a coin in your pocket if you don't have anything even remotely _like_ pockets."

"You know, that is not a bad idea," hummed Ragnuk. "Not too bad at all. We should tell our Lord President to implement such a policy within Gringotts, at least for the higher security yes. …You know, human, for one moment, we believed this nudity was merely a new human fashion trends. We thought, how silly will they get next? Men wearing trousers already beggared belief."

Ah, trust Goblins to be the one civilization in the western world where women wore trousers while men wore those dresses that they, along with the Wizarding World, insisted on calling 'robes'. But, her thoughts drifting to how certain Muggle youths had taken to dressing lately, Hermione allowed herself to share a knocking cackle with the Goblin King.

"…Well!" said Hermione after they'd both caught their breath, "do I get the shoes, or don't I?"

"Certainly, certainly!" said the Goblin King, genial. "Let it never be said a Monarch of the Kobolds was a bad host! Heh! Heh! Let us see."

The Goblin took a few steps back, almost leaning against his axe-covered wall, and suddenly began waving his hands in complicated patterns and muttering strangely-accented Gobbledegook. After a solid minute of this, a pair of perfectly appeared before her, to her delight. Less delightfully, they were green and clashed awfully with her mauve skin; but when she tried them on she found that they were perfectly-sized, which was more important, and warm, which was more important still.

"Thank you very much, sir," she thanked him sincerely. "Wonderfully made. Even wanded, such a flawless Conjuration would have been an unattainable feat for most mages I know. Remarkable."

"Thank you, thank you," said the Goblin King, breathing heavily. "We must say, this took a lot out of us. Damn the wizards and their wand ban… if you pardon our saying?"

"Damn away," she said, waving a hand. "The Wand Ban is a ridiculous display of anthropocentric bigotry, and I'm working on having it repealed."

Just like that, the cheerful atmosphere dropped.

The Goblin King's black eyes bore into her like drills.

"…who _are_ you?"

" _The crazy, scary one_? _The Parselmouth of Gryffindor_? I do like _Lady Macbrains_. Or, if you want to skip the nicknames, just Hermione. Hermione Granger. How do you do?"

"You are the one!" said the King, almost giddy, but tense also. "The Hermione Granger we have heard about — the one to whom the fool wizard Minister is a puppet! We have longed to learn of you, we did not believe our spies in Hogwarts, thought they must have the wrong human, another by the same name—"

"Wait, you have spies in Hogwarts?"

"Disguised as House-Elves," the King stated matter-of-factly. "They never mingle with the _real_ Elves, of course, but wizards are too careless to notice the one in rags scrubbing at their floor is one species or another, if they are not human to begin with."

"That… actually sounds plausible," Hermione commented. "Huh. Clever of you."

"We like to think so," said the old Goblin with a toothy grin. "But then! You truly are _the_ Hermione Granger. And you would lift the Wand Ban? But, now… this is wonderful!"

"Er, hold your hippogriffs, majesty," she interjected. "I do _want_ to lift it, but I only rule Wizarding _Britain_ , and only _sort_ of. Infiltrating the I.C.W. will take years yet, I'm afraid. Though I'll get there in the end, I'm sure."

"…Right," Ragnuk calmed down, massaging his large and wrinkled forehead, temporarily lifting the crown to do so. "Yes. But hope for a few years' time, still, it is infinitely more than no hope at all short of a war. Yes. …Tell me, Witch Queen, if you and we are to be allies… We asked, earlier, who you were. But perhaps, perhaps the true question was: what _are_ you?"

"What do you mean?"

With a look of blatant confusion, the King gestured at her figure Her purple, glowing figure.

"It is obvious you are not quite human," he said. "We felt it from the start. And we suppose it would explain… heheh. Yes, it does, doesn't it? It would explain the bias in your politics as I have witnessed them, towards helping the nonhuman. Obviously your human appearance is but a glamour, we assume?"

"I—"

Unthinkingly, Hermione had opened her mouth to correct his understandable misconception. No, she was not human, it had to do with her Resurrection Ritual, and the Acromantula's Blood, and she now had a very well-defined, finite list of perks she got from it, and—

But then she had an idea.

She could _use_ this.

(Something within her chided her for thinking in such blatantly Slytherin traits, but she silenced her own criticism: _it's not Slytherin until you start dressing in black and green, and sneering._ )

Every magical species had had to start somewhere. Some — most, perhaps — had been slow magical mutations, happening over the span of generations in millenia long gone by. Fleet-footed tribes had grown shorter and quieter, and became Elves. Carvers became Goblins. A family of Legilimenses, painfully twisting their beyond belief to get sustenance from other men, had withered away into Dementors. All either historical fact, or, failing that, plausible reconstructions accepted by most scholars. But there were also a few undeniable cases where magic had very deliberately, abruptly been the dawn of a new kind of being; there were, of course, Acromantulas, bred as guardians for treasure by greedy wizards. And it was no secret that an ancient Greek ritual had been the source of the Centaur line, though wizard and centaur scholars could never agree on whether it had been a ritual gone _wrong_ , or a ritual gone _right_.

So then; if she should ever have children, they would no doubt carry her magical traits.

Was she not the first of a new kind?

The Adam and Eve of a new world?

…Well, not really, Muggle science and, really, the most basic skepticism, would have said. But it wouldn't hurt her image to play it off that way.

Now then, quick, she must think of a name for her new species. Hermians? Grangeroids? Blah, certainly not. She was going about this the wrong way. What was her "species"' distinguishing trait? Ah, the color. Er, er…

…

"…I'm a violin."

…

…Why had she said that? Bad brain!

 _Bad! Bad! Bad!_

She was so busy mentally kicking herself that she didn't notice the Goblin King had started talking again until he was a few words in.

"…do see…" he said. "An old and noble people, the Violins, we're sure. The Goblin Nation has… not had contact with them for… a long time."

Oh come on. That wasn't fair. There _were_ such things as purple magical humanoids called Violins? What were the _odds_ of that?

"I… expect not," she answered with a forced smile.

"Yes…" the Goblin King continued, smiling as well, "but do believe, that we, the Goblins, never lost hope… that we would… the friendship of the Violins was always very dear to us…"

Oh.

Of course.

There _were_ no such things as Violins… so far. But the Goblin King though there _might_ be, the poor, lying, hypocritical, adorable old fool. He thought he was stuck in that oh-so-awkward place of not recognizing an old friend at a party; except the old friend was somehow an _entire species_ you had forgotten about.

Well, _that_ was lucky.

She burst out laughing.

"…Why do you laugh, Queen Granger?"

…' _Queen Granger_.'

Oh, this was too good.

 _Let's see how far I can take this._

"I am not laughing," she deadpanned, instantly stopping her laughter — though she could not suppress a lingering smile. "I am performing the time-honored Violin cry of glee in the face of undying loyalty. _Surely_ you _remember_?"

"…Yes, of course," said the old monarch, his grin looking faker and faker by the minute beneath the hooked nose and heavy crown. "Of course. But… …When you laughed earlier…?…"

"Oh, no," she assured him, trying to get the conversation back on a more productive, albeit less entertaining, track. "The cry of loyalty is only ever performed once before a given individual, as you know. And never at a time that does not strictly make sense in the conversation. …All this being said, and confidentially, I am only _half_ -Violin. That is why I attend Hogwarts and wear the glamour, you understand. …Anyway, we have digressed somewhat…"

"…Yes, we're afraid so…"

"…the main reason I was brought here, I think," she said, "I mean — except for the whole 'supposed robbery of the Lestrange vault' imbroglio — is because I think I found one big mountain-sized loophole in Gringotts's security."

"You do realize, Granger," the King said with a frown, "that this sort of thing is more the responsibility of the Lord President? Although we would of course be interested to hear it for ourselves as well."

"I understand, sir," Hermione said, grinning faintly at the memory, "and I did tell him, but he seemed to become… upset the moment I mentioned it, and sent me off to you."

" _gYurk!_ " swore Ragnuk. "Something great enough to make the Lord President feel unable to deal with a problem! Now this — tell. Do tell."

"I'll be blunt."

"We like that. Be so."

"…It's the walls."

Where Regnast had completely lost his composure, and temporarily, his heartbeat, Ragnuk the Seventh only dropped down on his decidedly un-throne-like chair. That was, Hermione supposed, why one was the Lord President, and one the actual King.

"We fear, greatly fear, that we see it, but _please explain._ "

"In all its centuries of existence, Gringotts Wizarding Bank has paid millions to geniuses, and formed many great minds of its own, in the art of magical warding. You have pushed the boundaries farther than any before or since, and still find improvement every year, it is said. You have enforced a strict secrecy on your security spells, and made it so that wands or no wands, Dark Magic or no Dark Magic, only Goblins may deactivate them."

"Yes! Yes!"

"…all to ward the _doors_. The Vault Doors of Gringotts are among the most hilariously indestructible objects on the face of the Earth. _But in all these centuries, none of you thought about the rest of the wall._ "

"No… no…! Surely… it can't be…!…"

"Ah, but it very much is," she said with a faked sympathetic smile. "I tested it myself today. Oh, I suppose there are one or two cursory spells to prevent pure-Muggle drills, or the very basest of exploding spells. But it's nothing. Mere Dragon Fire can melt through the stone surrounding a top-security vault! _Dragon Fire!_ Need I remind you lot that you _already keep Dragons by the vaults_?"

"…this is… dreadful," said Ragnuk, nervously running his claws along the length of one of the royal axes. "Absolutely horrible. Never did I… the whole Bank… every vault is the same!… we could never… it is… what must we do?!"

"Oh, well, I can think of a very simple start," Hermione said with a smile that was fast widening.

"Yes?"

"You could, for a start, release all of your Dragons. And sell them to some people I know are dying to buy them."

" _Yes_?"

"Why, those wonderful, humanely-run preserves in Romania, of course! I know a terrific wizard who works for them, through a mutual acquaintance, that is. His name is Weasley…"


	51. A Chat with the Hat

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Oh, Merlin, I apologize for the delay but the Curse of Writer's Block swooped down upon me and would not let go about this one. Which is still not Halloween, sorry… hah. I hope you enjoy this one, a long time coming though it may have been, and also that you will continue to show your support through the use of that marvelous magical device known as the "Review" button. Cheers!_

 **CHAPTER XXXXVIII: _A Chat with the Hat_**

" _This story begins… in olden times…_ yes, that's good, that's very good, but now, what's a good rhyme for 'time'? Limes, grimes, no, that will never—"

" _This story begins in olden times,_ / _In Hogsmeade Valley where the hour chimes_ / _Of a new age…_ you figure out the rest."

"Miss Granger!" the Sorting Hat called out, ceasing his muttering. "Well, well, well, come to see me again, have you? But that's good, you know, that's very good. The rhyme, I mean; though your coming to see me is very good too, of course."

"Hat," Hermione pointed out with a smile, "you're rambling."

"…so I am," he confessed. "But then — it _is_ your fault, somewhat, isn't it? You haven't come to see me in months, I've lost the habit of conversation now."

"Don't you _ever_ talk with _anyone else?_ " she asked.

As the Sorting Hat began his reply, she gently plucked him from the shelf on which he usually lied, and laid him down on the Headmaster's desk; she then confidently sat down in Dumbledore's empty (and remarkably throne-like) chair.

"Well, no, not anymore," the Hat answered. "Albus usually finds something else to do than keep poor old me company, and as to the Portraits… strictly between us, they're a great bunch of canvassed laze-abouts with not a spark of an interesting conversation between them. Or they take themselves far too seriously to associate with a piece of clothing — take your pick."

" _How dare you!_ " said a Portrait. "Hat, whether flesh or paint, I am not and have never been _lazy_!"

"That may be true, dear Heliotrope," said the Hat, "but it is also balanced out by the fact that you are _never here_. You seem to spend most of your time elsewhere in the castle… for instance, say, in the portrait of the Three Bathing Nymphs on the third floor…"

"You will desist from your accusations, Hat!" ordered Headmistress Wilkins before stomping out of her frame.

"You see?" the Hat concluded, again speaking to Hermione. "This is the sort of company I get here. The Portraits are lazy, and even then, they… dislike me."

"Why so?"

"They are… jealous, I think," the Hat mused, glancing up with evident disdain. "They see me as a more realized version of a Portrait… one who can actually move about in the physical realm. If only so much, of course; I do lack limbs, after all."

"What do you mean, a more realized Portrait?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow. "I… how were you made, Hat? I… honestly, I assumed you were just a stunning bit of Substitutiary Locomotion and no more than that. …As far as your animation is concerned, of course. I know you have quite a few more amazing enchantments besides, like…"

"Oh yes," the Hat confirmed heartily, "oh yes, many indeed, many more than any Headmaster ever knew about, in fact. For instance, I can s… oh, but I shouldn't tattle to just any schoolgirl, now can I? Hah!"

"Fair enough," she conceded, though making a mental note to later investigate what the Hat had meant to say.

"…But Substitutiary Locomotion? Dear me, no!" the timeless object continued. "I daresay I am much more than a bit of cloth, a bit of magic and some stuffed expectations. Oh, don't tell Goldie I said such things about his kind, but that _is_ what they are, isn't it? Puppets, puppets who dream they're alive. And to an extent, they're right, of course,;that's always the wonderful thing, with magic, you can never quite tell what is truth and what is illusion; but then again… I'm sorry, Miss Granger, am I making sense here?"

"…Not really, to be quite frank."

"Ah," the Hat said, its tip drooping a bit. "I apologize. But as I was saying, though the guiding principles of Substitutiary Locomotion as understood by Godric Gryffindor _were_ , admittedly, how this pile of old cloth gained the gift of mobility, my mind is another matter entirely. A blank mind first was made, though kept unconscious; then through memory-magic of the very same sort as used in Portrait-making, each Founder imprinted an echo of their soul and memory unto it, so creating me."

"That's why you know so much about each Founder…" Hermione breathed in sudden understanding, the pieces clicking together. "You didn't just _know_ them — you have all their memories!…"

"Quite," the Hat said, before adding, snide: "Of course, it's all in my song, you know. You _could_ pay attention."

 _Oh_ , was all Hermione could think for an instant. For three years now she had meticulously avoided all mention of her hatty friend's yearly… musical performances during their weekly conversations. It had taken great care and diplomacy. Her heartbeat began quickening as the silence drew on, inching towards the awkward; then she had an idea.

 _Just slip in Fudge's-advisor mode_.

"Oh, I'm so very sorry, dear Hat," she blurted out with her best apologetic look. "But your singing was so good, I could hardly listen to the lyrics."

 _There,_ she bitterly congratulated herself, _you have spared his feelings. Also lied to the hundred-years-old Legilimens with the memories of four of the greatest mages who ever lived. Good job._

But the Sorting Hat didn't seem to find anything amiss about her obsequious praise, and merely hummed in contentment.

"Ah! Well in this case. Yes. Thank you, thank you, one tries, you know. …Would you like me to sing you a ballad?" he then suggested. "It's been a rather long time since I gave it a shot, but I do know a few songs that I didn't write myself. Why, I can't imagine why the Filius boy hasn't asked me to join his choir yet."

"Nor I," Hermione said mechanically, her mind racing to find a way out of the predicament of an unsolicited Sorting Hat song. "Er… who do you get it from?"

"What?"

"The singing," she explained. "Liking to… sing. In hindsight, I presume it's a trait carried over from one of the Founders, no? If none of them liked to sing, it would be somewhat surprising for the 'sum of their parts' to willingly do son on a yearly basis."

"Ah yes! Yes," chuckled the Hat. "How very perceptive of you. Heheh. You're right, of course, _the singing_ didn't come out of thin air. It was Salazar, of course."

"…Salazar Slytherin? The Enslaver of Basilisk? The Scourge of the Muggles? He _sung_?"

(She'd refrained herself at the last moment from adding: " _Badly?!_ ")

"Ho-now!" the Hat said, feigning ire. "Be careful when speaking of Professor Slytherin! You _are_ speaking to one-fourth of him! …Granted, he's not the part of me I'm most proud of, by a long shot, but he's not so bad as the stories make him out to be."

Hermione crossed her arms, growing serious.

"A _Parselmouth_ who _knowingly_ treats a snake as he did the poor { _Great Basilisk_ }…" she said darkly. "Bah. Perhaps he wasn't quite the Turban-clone the stories make him out to be, but, no offense to you, Hat, such a man _deserves_ his good name sullied."

Shifting on his base, the Sorting Hat gave her a distant, dark look. For one moment, the Hat, who had always been timeless, looked _ancient_.

She bit her lip. _Of course._ Her poor old friend _knew_ how vile Salazar Slytherin had been; he didn't let on, but the memories of Salazar Slytherin's every wicked thought and dark deed, locked in the same mind as the virtue of Godric Gryffindor, the compassion of Helga Hufflepuff and the wisdom of Rowena Ravenclaw… Lord, when you put it like that — well, she was surprised the poor Hat had managed to stay _sane_ for a thousand years with all that stirring inside him.

"It's… it's alright if you… don't want to talk about him," she offered, doing her best to convey sympathy.

"That's… very considerate of you, Miss Granger, very considerate," the Hat said in a thankful voice, a smile slowly creeping back among the seams and folds. "But if I failed to face this past even though it's not truly _mine_ … then it would be the Gryffindor part of me that I would be failing, I think. I am very, very old, Miss Granger, and I made peace with Salazar Slytherin and his legacy many, many years ago. As far as he is concerned, I mourn his victims but try to remember his good side… and he did have one, I know so. Salazar had his tender moments; Salazar loved music and cooking, he prized knowledge and enlightenment. He loved his wife and children, most of all I know he truly valued the friendship of his companions. Those are the things I call to mind when I am reminded of Salazar… the things that mankind would remember too, in their history books, if they were, oh, a little bit kinder."

"Hm," she muttered. "You're… right, of course. You _are_ wise, never let any smug ten-year-old make fun of you."

"Miss Granger, the thought never occurred to me."

"It is simply… hard," continued Hermione, "to remember all those wise principles, when that poor Basilisk still lives and suffers… and she does suffer, you know. Still bound by oaths and curses. I've… gotten used to it, somewhat, of course, but she can only speak to me in the third person even today. We never did find anything more than that loophole, to beat that stupid bond of obedience."

The Hat winced.

"…Wait," she said.

The Hat winced again.

" _Wait,_ " Hermione went on, louder and louder, though it was obvious the Hat got it already. "You — you have Slytherin's memories! You _know_ what spells he used! You know how to undo the curse! You _remember_ this!"

By then she had gotten up from the comfortable chair and was leaning quite close to the Hat on the desk, brandishing a menacing wand.

"N… Not quite, Miss Granger, not quite," the Hat said, contrite. "You have to remember, I was made in the early days of Hogwarts — before the row, before Salazar left, before he built his Chamber and bred his slave. I don't _truly_ remember it."

"…Oh," was all she could say. "Right. Yes. Sorry. I should have noticed the timeline was off. I'm sor—"

" _But_ ," the artifact interrupted her, a guilty look in his empty eyes, "it is true that my memories of Salazar give me… an educated guest, as to what curse he might have thought to use. From what you

" _Really?_ " Hermione said, suddenly hopeful, laying all anger towards the Hat aside.

Maybe she could help her other medieval friend after all.

"Really," the Hat nodded. "Oh yes, the more I think about it, about what you told me of her… symptoms… it must be that, it simply must be. I'm so sorry, Miss Granger, I never thought of it, I wasted time telling you about Rowena's white nights and Helga's soufflés and I never even considered I might — but you see, he'd thought of it as… a thought experiment. And it was not a pleasant one. It was not a pleasant thought. It was one of those I had mulled over, in my… youth… then locked away for my own peace."

"Hat, Hat," she said, gripping the brim of the Hat as one would hold an upset old man's hand. "It's okay. I forgive you. I wholly, truly forgive you. I… realize now that it's not all songs and napping, not all fun and games… being you. It's alright."

"Thank you…"

" _Well now,_ " she said, snapping back into business mode. "All feelings aside. This curse. What was it, and how can I reverse it?"

"Ah," said the Hat. "Well. …Oh, I know how you'll react to this, Miss Granger, I just know… let me put it this way. Next time she passes by Hogwarts… you should arrange for our friend Tom to offer her a scarf."

Hermione blinked twice and sat down in the chair, baffled. Then she _got it_.

"…"

"Let me guess," said the Hat, his voice somewhere between concern and amusement, "you are torn between urges to laugh, to applaud, and to strangle Salazar Slytherin with his own ridiculous green scarf."

"How did you guess?" Hermione answered with a wry smile. "Wait, right, I know this one you're my friend and also you read my mind three years ago. …Well yes, you got it right. Except for that last part about the green scarf…?"

"Oh yes," chuckled Slytherin. "His mother knitted it for him, you know. He didn't find it any less buffoonish than everyone who ever saw him wearing it. But Astraeia Slytherin was both, if I do say so, the very type of the mother hen — _and_ a formidable Dark Witch. She jinxed the scarf; poor Salazar never agains stepped outside without it, he couldn't, physically couldn't. Clever bit of spell-work, even he thought so."

Hermione chuckled softly while the Hat smiled, lost in reminiscence.

"…but enough about me," he said at last. "I always have the leisure of thinking of all those memories; let's take fuller advantage of your visit, eh? What have you been up to, then, Miss Granger?"

Hermione smiled. And she told him. She told him what a few weeks had brought for her — a tale of cauldrons and dragons and Kings, of the rebirth of a girl and the birth of the Violins. As always, by the end of her account, the Sorting Hat would have been crying with laughter, had he possessed lacrimal glands.

"…and after all that I came back here and enjoyed a few quiet weeks of studying, and then I remembered you, and, well here I am."

"Wonderful! Hahah! Simply wonderful," he commented. "Oh, I have a thousand questions… and as many suggestions, about where to take the Violin civilization, heheh… Godric once did something like that, you know, a little; he tries to declare Hogwarts an independent nation… of course, his brother Gaetan, on the Wizards' Council, had different ideas… But I ramble. The question I'll start with…"

"Yes? I'm all ears," she said. "I'm usually the one asking questions, but as of late it seems I rub off on people."

"Or you've just become interesting to ask about," the Hat joked. "Ransom of fame and all. Mind, I'm as famous as they get and no one but you ever asks _me_ anything. Ahem. My question is this: the object you took from the Lestrange Vault. What was it?"

"Ah! Well!" Hermione answered, mischievous. "Now that I think about it, you might, as a matter of fact, be just the person to ask about it. I meant to unveil it at the Order meeting on Sunday, but… ah, it's — well, I _think_ it is — an ancient artifact of great power, one which had nothing to do in the Lestrange Vault."

"Oh? Really?" he said, interested. "What _is_ it?"

"A medieval artifact, thought lost, a sort of cup or goblet," she prompted. "Oh, come on, try to guess! It's got a lot in common with _you_ , from a certain point of view."

To her surprise, the Hat started _shaking_.

"It's-it's not…" he stammered. "No, it couldn't be… could it…?!…"

"Oh, but it is, or at least, I think so," she said, fishing around her satchel for the object.

"No! _No!_ " the Hat cried, more and more desperate, trying to inch away.

"…I present, back from the depths of Gringotts, the genuine Cup of Hufflepuff!" she announced at last, brandishing the golden cup adorned with a carving of a badger.

The Sorting Hat breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh!… Oh, that's alright, then; for a moment I thought…"

"For a moment you thought _what_?" she asked, curiously.

"Hmf," he huffed, avoiding the question. "Yes, yes, it _is_ Helga's cup, clear as day."

"Ah, good," she said. "Then I've got it right. …What does it do? I have scoured the Library for information, but found only dozens of contradictory rumors."

"What does it do?" the Hat repeated, amused. "Has that too been lost! Hah! Think, Miss Granger. What was the place of Helga Hufflepuff in the history of Hogwarts? What did she create?"

"The kitchen," Hermione remembered. "The House-Elves. The tables that teleport the food up!…"

"Quite," said the Hat. "The Cup was, to an extent, a prototype of the Great Hall Table enchantments, which Helga would go on to craft. Although where the Table merely beam up food from another room, the Cup can be used to summon food that was vanished into it even years prior. I suspect that somewhere down there is a delicious feast cooked hundreds of years ago and preserved within it just in case — unless its last owner before the Lestranges was too gluttonous."

"Okay," Hermione said. "Then how do you access it?"

"Oh, simply tilt back the cup, expecting food," the Hat said jadedly. "It'll come out as though this were the very Cornucopia, you'll see this."

She picked up the Cup from the desk and began to tilt it to its side—

"Wait," she stopped herself. "Wait. Before I do anything rash — I should probably check that there aren't any curses on it, shouldn't it?"

"Curses?" the Hat repeated dumbly. "Why would Helga have put any c—"

"Not Professor Hufflepuff," Hermione interrupted him, annoyed. "The Lestranges."

"—ah. Yes. _They_ might be type," he admitted.

"Now let me see…" she said to herself. "A good general diagnosis spell… yes. Got it. Precise intent, triangular pattern… yes… _Revelio Malum_."

 _Revelio Malum_ was a simple curse-breaking charm she had found somewhere in her readings and tested out on a pair of Ron's socks which he suspected (rightly) the Twins had tampered with. In the presence of a jinx or curse, a flare of blue light would appear briefly around the targeted object, stronger depending on the complexity and threat-level of the detected curse.

From the Cup first came a small sputter of light, which she recognized as the remains of a curse that had already broken. But then, oh, then, there was a gigantic _blaze_ of azure fire that blinded her for a full ten seconds and knocked her and the Sorting Hat to the floor, on opposite sides of Dumbledore's desk

"What was _that_?!" she shouted, soon echoed by most of the Portraits (though not Professor Dippet, who had somehow slept right through it).

"That…" the Hat said uncertainly, "Merlin's whiskers, _that_ … signifies some of the darkest magic I have ever witnessed, in any of my five lives… oh, me, oh my."

"Oh God…" Hermione whispered. "…a Founder's Artifact… with a curse, too, the Dragon's Fire must have taken it off but there _was_ a second curse on it… oh, Hat, I think I know what that is."

"Then I'd feel very much obliged if you could tell me!" he said in a temperamental voice.

"Okay, okay, I just need to test the theory… let me think… ah, I know."

She picked up the Hat and dropped him _onto_ the Cup of Hufflepuff.

"Wh-wha-whu-!?" spluttered the hat.

"Can you feel a piece of the Turban in there?" she asked.

" _WHAT?!_ " screamed the Hat, jiggling and shaking as if trying to get away from the Cup. "You think this might be a — but — yes! _Yes!_ I can feel him in there! Now get me _off_ —no, wait, don't—yes, do!"

Knocking aside her chair, Hermione trained her wand on the Hat — whose eyes were flickering a glowing scarlet.

"Don't listen! _GET OUT OF ME, YOUNG MAN!_ — Hah! Never, fool hat! — Miss Granger, you fantastic, heroic, mountain-sized idiot! Get Albus! _Now!_ "


	52. Sorting Memories

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _Bang! Another chapter. I couldn't leave that cliffhanger hanging too long — who am I, Lemony Snicket? Incidentally, mark that the necessary clues to how Hermione will get out of this one were all there in the previous Chapter. If you want to try and guess, as many of you did for her "death" around Chapter 42, now is the time. …Alright, past this point, either you're back, or you never left. Now for my usual request for reviews and all other forms of support, and here we go!_

 **Chapter XXXXIX: _Sorting Memories_**

"Hat! Hat! Come on! You have to fight it!"

Hermione had shouted at a Portrait to go get Dumbledore and any other Professor who might help, and cast a Shield Charm — mindful of Professor Grindelwald's lessons, she fashioned it in the shape of an inverted half-sphere, so as to cover the Hat as closely as possible. Now all she could do was wait and watch as the Sorting Hat shook and fumed within its bubble, fighting an enemy within. Watch, _and_ shout vaguely-helpful encouragements, of course.

" _Fight it!_ "

"What do you think I'm _doing!?_ " grunted the Hat.

Then the Horcrux took over; a snarl overtook his cloth face; and he said:

" _Stupid, foolish girl! You think words will defeat me, the greatest Legilimens who ever_ — you wait a moment there, Tommy-boy! You may have some limited talent there, but _I_ am hardly anything _but_ Legilimency personified! Hah! — _And yet you can't keep me out? Nyehrk! Some expert!_ — I said Legilimens, not Occlumens, didn't I?!… Now enough of this nonsense — _I quite agree! Surrender!_ "

"Surrender!" Hermione repeated, making her voice as bold and confident as possible. " _Surrender_! Do you know _whose_ mind you're invading? The Hat contains the distilled essence of Godric goddamned Gryffindor! And you think he'll give up just because you ask him too? You've got another thing coming!"

" _Strong words from the one who compromised her friend so in the first place…_ " answered the Horcrux through the Hat's lips. " _Thank you, Miss Granger, I couldn't have done it without you!_ …"

 _"_ Don't you _dare_ thank me for this!" screamed Hermione.

"But—"

"Just because I underestimated you again doesn't make me your _ally_ , or else Professor Dumbledore is your _best friend_!"

"Of course, but—"

"I don't even know _why_ you're doing this! You're the one trying to possess the Sorting Hat, not _me!_ "

"Oh, I'm not either, you know," he answered.

"…What?"

"It's me, it's the Hat, I'm back," said the Hat. "I tried to tell you, twice, I — oh — ugh! Here we go ag— urgk _khhdamn this Hat and his resilience!…_ "

There was the Horcrux again, red eyes and all. For some reason, every time the Hat slipped into Horcrux-mode, its eyes flared red; Hermione should have noticed, but she had been too engrossed in what she was saying. Again.

" _Oh, but he cannot win, you know, girl! The Hat may be older and wiser, but I am a true soul. He is but an echo. I cannot fail in the—_ would you stop _monologuing_ , Riddle?! — _You are in no place to give me orders, puppet!_ — I am no puppet!…—"

Watching with the detachment of someone in an utterly surreal situation over which they have, in the end, no power, Hermione noted that it was kind of amusing, whenever the Hat and Horcrux switched in quick succession, how the glowing-eyes shut on and off and on again like a police car's headlights.

She snapped out of her daydream when it looked like the Horcrux was momentarily having the upper hand. She knew because the moment he did, Riddle had started gloating again. That man, whether he be a monkey or a necklace or a hat, was obviously incapable of just _shutting up_ no matter what was at stake. She didn't even try to listen to what he was saying, only catching phrases like ' _absolute power_ ', ' _bow to me_ ', and ' _unlimited rice pudding is mine!_ '. (…Well, she might have been imagining that last one.)

"…You do realize even if you take control of him, you're trapped in the middle of Hogwarts with no legs?" she told Voldemort, interrupting his monologue.

" _Don't interrupt me!_ " snapped the broken piece of Dark Lord. " _I am gloating here, you pathetic Muggle! You will be disposed of, as shall everyone else in this rotten excuse of a school who would oppose me — you are but a child — you cannot destroy an artifact such as the Hat of Sorting!_ "

The red lights flickered outjust long enough for the Hat to add, spiteful:

"— it's Sorting Hat, you pompous git! No need for honorifics when you're trying to _disintegrate me from the inside!_ "

Immediately the blazing fire returned.

" _Graaarh!_ " roared Voldemort. " _I will not stand for your mockeries! Why I-_ "

"Oh? Not threatened by a child, are we, Mr Turban?" she joked. "My friend Harry Potter would beg to disagree."

" _…_ _Who's Harry Potter!?_ " asked the Horcrux dumbly. " _No… wait… I see it. I see the Hat's memories… oh, my. Such an embarrassing way to go…"_

"Well, I can't fault you on thinking so," she snarked.

" _…_ _BUT THE DARK LORD SHALL RISE AGAIN!_ " he finished, " _and his new reign, MY new reign, begins here! TODAY! No child will stop me—_ "

"But I will," said a high, yet dignified voice coming from the staircase.

Hermione, the Horcrux and the Hat all gasped as a wizard of great age and power, a wizard to make the most hardened Death Eater falter, entered the room.

"…Professor Flitwick?!"

"Well, yes, Miss Granger," said Flitwick, rubbing at his white mustache. "A Portrait alerted me, I came as soon as I managed. …You _did_ send for help, didn't you?"

"Er, yes, but I was expecting…" Hermione hesitated, "Professor Dumbledore, or…, or… Professor Snape…?…"

"Miss Granger," Flitwick said, calmly, yet with a sense of profound frustration, "Professor Snape is a _potion-maker_ , whereas I was once one of this country's finest duelists. I _cannot_ , for the life of me, comprehend why people flock to _him_ sooner than me in these circumstances."

"…He… was a Death Eater?…" suggested Hermione, shrugging.

"Oh yes," the Charms Master answered with palpable irony, "when a teenager, he joined up with a gang of hardened murders. Of _course_! How ever did I forget these _outstanding_ credentials?"

"Yes, yes, sorry," said Hermione. "Confidentially, a better reason for _my_ mistake, is probably that he's in the Order of the Phoenix and you are not."

"Only because during the First War, my renowned skill had be drafted into the Auror corps, leaving me little time for running about on Albus's errands," he revealed. "But now, enough of this chit-chat. We have a _situation_ on our hands."

" _Ah, thank you for remembering me,_ " the Horcrux said, his voice cold and biting. " _Hello, Filius. You haven't changed._ "

"I can't say the same for you, 'Dark Lord of All'," joked Flitwick, who had already trained his wand on the Hat, after reinforcing Hermione's Shield Spell with his own. "From an albino ghoul playing Grim Reaper to a pathetic little parasite leeching off a hat. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Mind you, I am not entirely sure which form is the less repulsive of the pair…"

" _Be silent, Goblin!_ " spat the Horcrux. " _And listen. You are not unintelligent, and though your parentage is unfortunate, your skill more than makes up for it. As you see, soon I shall return; surely you do not think you can stop me now? With the help of a mudblood girl!_ "

"You _will_ take that back!" Hermione said, jumping closer to the Hat. "And you listen here, _Turban_ , I have already defeated _four_ of you. And they weren't near-literal sitting ducks stuck in the middle of your worst enemy's _office_."

"Miss Granger," said Professor Flitwick, "please do leave us to it. Three's the charm, they say, but two is a duel. And this is a duel, I think. Even if my opponent can't quite reach for his wand, hm hm?"

"Mr Flitwick!" rumbled the Hat's real voice coming through. "I like you, I've always liked you, and I'm all for insulting Tommy-boy, but please avoid comments that incriminate _me_ , too! — _Leave us, fool Hat! You have lost this battle of wills!_ — Well, obviously I haven't."

"Sorty, Sorty, Sorty!" Flitwick cheered. "Atta boy, still resisting! Keep on the fight, I'll think of something—"

" _We'll_ think of something," Hermione corrected with a scornful look.

"And as it happens," the Hat added, equally scornful, "I prefer 'Hat', Filius, if you _must_ use a nickn— _hah! Sorty! Just the_ _sort_ _of name you deserve! Hah! Hah! Hah!_ — Riddle, that was hardly even a joke, let alone a funny one. By Merlin, but this is Salazar all over again."

 _Salazar all over again._

Just then, something _clicked_ in Hermione's mind.

"Professor Flitwick," she said, in a voice that was more order than question.

"Yes?"

"I take it you are capable of Legilimency?" she asked pragmatically. "If not to the level of the Hat and the Turban."

"Yes, yes, I am," he said, "but that hardly seems relevant. I am familiar with your turn of thinking — are you considering a… counter-possession? Sending in a third party to mediate? Because my Legilimency certainly isn't up to—"

"Professor, look into my eyes, and cast the spell," Hermione ordered him, truly ordered this time.

Flitwick's eyes widened as he began to raise his wand.

* * *

" _What? No! That is **cheating**!_"

Spoken in the shrill voice of Lord Voldemort through the enchanted voice-box of the Sorting Hat, those were the last words Hermione heard before she immersed herself in meditation, reaching inwards and waiting for the familiar tug of a Legilimens, at the edge of her conscious mind. She half-awaited the word ' _Legilimens_ ', but of course, the Charms Master of Hogwarts was hardly going to do this verbally, and so the probe went in unannounced.

Doing her best to recall every Occlumency trick Dumbledore had told her, she summoned a barrier of thought at the intruding entity; only, it wasn't false memories, or even a hard brick wall; it was a message. The idea, as clear and focused as she could make it, of spoken words.

[ _There. Telepathic communication. They can't, absolutely can't, overhear us._ ]

…

There was a delay in Professor Flitwick's response as he figured out just how to send his answer; and it occurred to her that Flitwick _really was that good_ , as they said, because he was performing this experimental magic _even as he still held his Shield Charm._

[… _There we are— can you… hear me?_ ]

[Quite _well, Professor. Well? Pretty clever, isn't it?_ ]

[ _Yes, yes, it is. I would award points, Miss Granger, but if the Sorting Hat can't hear us, I'm sure that the Tally Teller will fare no better…_ ]

[ _You sound younger here,_ ] Hermione remarked, growing comfortable with this mode of conversation. [ _…Ah, of course. We are both projecting our internal voices. How we hear ourselves. The old story._ ]

[ _Indeed,_ ] Flitwick agree, managing to send through the idea of a _nod_. [ _But now, again, let's not waste time, here. What's so important, that it can only be said within the field of experimental telepathy?_ _That_ _I would like to know._ ]

[ _I have a plan._ ] she stated.

There was, again, a pause, and on the edge of her mind Hermione could just barely hear the Turban, throwing a hissy fit because his opponents had stopped listening to him. She paid him no mind.

[… _I know I should rejoice and ask for details, Miss Granger_ ,] said Flitwick, [ _but since I surmise that it is another one of your_ _plans_ _that contaminated one of Hogwarts's most prized possession with a shard of You-Know-Who in the first place… you will allow me to remain skeptical._ ]

[Professor, _please_ _!_ ] she insisted. [ _This isn't my first Horcrux. And besides, sorry to blurt it out to you, but if it comes down to it the Hat will follow_ _my_ _plan sooner than yours._ ]

Flitwick conveyed a mental sigh, quite a powerful one at that.

[Very _well. But although I accept the facts, Miss Granger, that doesn't mean I_ _approve_ _of them._ ]

[So _you'll follow my plan?_ ]

[ _Unless I find something glaringly stupid to it at first glance,_ ] he said. [ _But then, one rarely does, with your sort's plans. That's why you're so dangerous. Gryffindors can plan something that sounds wonderful, and still miss a factor the size of an Erumpent. …Yes, I'll follow your plan, most likely._ ]

[ _Good_ ,] Hermione said. [ _By God, I wish you wouldn't be so bitter about it. But good. Now! Your part in this is fairly simple. Hold the shield in case Riddle tries anything funny, and, when I say the codeword, I want you to cast a Confundus Charm at the Hat._ ]

[ _You do realize, this would take a very powerful Charm indeed, to work on the Sorting Hat._ ]

[ _Are you the finest duelist in England, or_ _aren't_ _you?!_ ]

[ _Point taken,_ ] he conceded. [ _What's the codeword?_ ]

Hermione paused for an instant before answering, a smile on her lips:

[Violin.]

[ _Violin? Why on Ear—_ ]

* * *

*BLINK*

And the connection was broken.

* * *

Professor Flitwick seemed to object to the abrupt nature of the conclusion, and was about to say so, but she raised a palm to silence him.

She turned to the Hat.

"Hat?"

" _There is no Hat!_ " came her reply. " _I have overtaken his feeble—_ "

"Oh, good, it's Mr Monologue," she deadpanned. "Do you realize, one of your incarnations is literally a monkey, and he was _less_ irritating than _you_ are?!"

" _How dare you speak to me this way? You shall rue the d—_ "

{ _OH SHUT UP!_ } she shouted, slipping into Parseltongue quite purposefully.

The Cup Horcrux left the Sorting Hat's mouth hanging open and his eyes open wide.

{ _You're a…_ } he blubbered. " _You're… you…"_

 _"_ Yyyyep," said Flitwick in an uncharacteristically careless tone.

"Hah!" the Sorting Hat's voice rang. "A distraction for Voldemort! Just what I needed. Thank you, Miss Granger, so resourceful."

"Great, you're back, it worked, don't mention it," Hermione said quickly, her eyes looking straight at the Hat through Flitwick's shimmering Shield Charm. "Listen, this is important. Fighting back against it, it's not working. I mean, it's working _now_ , but he's right, it'll never hold."

"So, what, Miss Granger?" huffed the Hat. "Am I to simply give up?"

"Certainly not," said Hermione, "I'm telling you to _invite him in_ …"

"What?!"

"On your _own_ terms, that is," she added.

"Again — what?!"

"Think, Hat!" she urged him. "You heard the Turban, he's a shard of a soul! A _part_ of someone! Absorbing a part of someone, you've done this before!"

The ancient artifact's fold-like eyebrows rose ever so slightly, and she knew she had been right, she knew Professor Ravenclaw's echo hadn't been wasted on the pointy hat, she knew he'd _got it_. Now quickly, as the sunken black eyes turned to red —

"— _What? No, no, no, NO, NOOO! —_ "

"Professor! _Violin_!"

"C- _Confundo!_ "

…

* * *

…

"Well then, Hermione," said Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, the long fingers of his right hand fishing inside a golden bowl of sugar-frosted strawberries. "I trust that you acted rightly, but I believe I am owed an explanation."

"Didn't Professor Flitwick…?" she asked in mild surprise.

"Only that you had _been clever again,_ " the Headmaster quoted with a warm chuckle. "Dear me, Filius is a good man, but he has his pride, and I think he never will quite get over not having you for a pupil."

"He _does_ have me for a pupil, Albus" Hermione pointed out. "I'm just not in his House. But he is my Charms Master, and very good at it…"

"You should tell him that, then, some time," Dumbledore. "That poor wizard doesn't get enough compliments, I think. I suppose he is too normal. Next to an Animagus, a Death Eater, and, well, me… he is taken for _granted_ , I suppose. He's never the subject of rumor or gossip, students never ask, 'oh, and what did Flitwick get up to today? what interesting new thing has he done?'."

"People _like_ him," Hermione argued.

"Yes, I suppose they do," said Dumbledore, stroking his beard, "but ask yourself this; how many would you say _love_ him?…"

The Alchemist let his words sink in for a moment before continuing:

"But as always, I digress… as is the lot of all clever men, I sometime think. And oops — I appear to have done it again."

She couldn't repress a laugh.

"Still, we should get on with your story," he said, extracting a perfectly ripe banana from beneath the berries; a banana far longer than the silver bowl was high. "Well?"

"I don't really know where to begin," Hermione said, hesitant. "Did I tell you about — oh, no, I didn't. Well, on my visit to Gringotts, the one where I met Ragnuk…"

"You know, Hermione, I know only one other person who spoke of the Goblin King so cavalierly," Dumbledore remarked, "and that brazen youth is talking to you now."

"Well I'm in good company, then, am I not?" she joked. "On that visit, then, I happened upon what I thought was a Horcrux."

"The object—"

"Yes, _that_ 's where it came from," she confirmed. "Don't worry, it's devoldemorted. …devoldemorted. At this rate, we'll have cause to make this a real, official, documented word. …Well, anyway, I more or less accidentally made it possess the Sorting Hat…"

"A _c_ c _i_ d _e_ n _t_ a _l_ l _y_ , _s_ h _e_ s _a_ y _s_ ," the Sorting Hat said wryly from up on his shelf.

"…after I'd had a long and most enlightening chat with him," she continued. "He wouldn't quite and neither I nor Professor Flitwick had any idea how to _subdue_ something like the Sorting Hat; so I did the next best thing. I made him _absorb_ Riddle."

"… _Absorb_ him," Dumbledore repeated slowly, putting down what was left of the banana.

"Yes," she confirmed. "You are aware, of course, of the fact that the Sorting Hat is himself an amalgamation of the minds of the four Founders?"

"Of course," he answered. "What sort of Headmaster of Hogwarts would I be if I had missed such a crucial element?"

"Well, I reasoned," she further explained, "that if the Hat could have absorbed pseudo-souls four times over, even if these were Portrait-type minds rather than soul-shards… well, it was worth giving it a try. I told him to try and merge with the Horcrux, Professor Flitwick added a Confundus Charm to shake things up, and here we are."

"You mean to say…" Dumbledore said, looking very warily at the battered old hat on his top shelf, "that _this_ … is half of Lord Voldemort?"

"N _o_ t _h_ a _l_ f," the Hat corrected. " _O_ n _e_ -f _i_ f _t_ h, _p_ r _e_ c _i_ s _e_ l _y_."

"The other four-fifth are still the same old Sorting Hat," Hermione added. " _Statistically,_ here's only twenty percent a murderous maniac."

"This does not exactly sound reassuring," Dumbledore sighed, though she could see in his eyes that he was teasing her more than anything else.

" _W_ e _l_ l," the Sorting Hat added, " _t_ o _b_ e _f_ a _i_ r, _t_ h _e_ r _e_ i _s_ a _l_ s _o_ m _y_ S _l_ y _t_ h _e_ r _i_ n _s_ i _d_ e _t_ o _c_ o _n_ s _i_ d _e_ r. _S_ o… _p_ e _r_ h _a_ p _s_ m _o_ r _e_ o _f_ a _f_ o _r_ t _y_ p _e_ r _c_ e _n_ t."

"This sounds even less so," Dumbledore said.

"Oh shut up," Hermione answered, playful. "Grindelwald's your Defence Professor."


	53. All Hallows' Eve

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Well! This is it! Our very own '50th Anniversary Special'… if we're counting in chapters rather than years, of course. Funny enough, we were supposed to get to this chapter five or six chapters ago, but more plot kept growing on me without my even realizing it, and in the end I realized I had the opportunity to make it coincide with Chapter 50 so I altered my plans somewhat to get us here. And I think the story is improved for it, in the end. Anyway, as always, thanks to those who have already showed their support, and the rest of you, please review!_

 **Chapter L: _All Hallows's Eve_**

 _October 29th, 1994_

 _Prof. Snape,_

 _(No, I shall not lie by writing 'Dear')_

 _As you well know (since the requisite canceling of classes will spare both of us a tedious hour of each other's company), next Monday will be Hallowe'en. Hallowe'en, also known as All Hallows' Eve, was traditionally a day to commune with the spirits of the dearly departed. Between this historical function, the name itself, and the sinister anniversary it marks, you will understand why I couldn't resist picking this day to be the Day._

 _Much as we had previously discussed, I think my friend Harry Potter, or Sir Scarhead, deserves to see Mrs Potter first, for several reasons (including right of blood, proportionally more years of her absence to make up for, and the fact that_ _his_ _actions did not lead to Mrs Potter's demise). As I know you well enough to anticipate your reaction, do not worry; your day of reunion shan't be marred by bumping into Harry on the way. He shall have an hour of Lily Potter's company from 5 to 6 p.m.; whereas you are invited to come at 7 p.m. A comfortable meeting place has been arranged for; what used to be the 7B Classroom (in disuse for over seventy-three years), which shall henceforth be known as the Resurrectorium._

 _As a friendly suggestion, she may appreciate it if you would remember to wash your hair, if only just this once._

 _Hermione J. Granger —_

 _Lady Macbrains of the Order of the Junior Marauders;_

 _Order of the Merlin (2nd Class);_

 _Personal Advisor to Cornelius Fudge;_

 _Knight of the Phoenix;_

 _Ambassador of the Violin Nation;_

 _One of your fourth-year Potions students._

* * *

Sitting in his hard wooden chair in his office, which he'd made a point to furnish more soberly than a monastery cell, Severus resisted his urge to crumple the parchment and throw it in the fire.

What did he care about the Granger girl's derisively obsequious tone?

What did it matter that she flaunted the Potter boy's link to Lily?

Why should he concern himself with her mockeries about his personal hygiene?

Thirteen years to the day after everything he cared for on this sinful earth had been obliterated—

he was going to see Lily again.

* * *

Hermione spent most of Sunday transfiguring Classroom 7B into her dream Necromantorium; though Professor Dumbledore had offered help, she'd decided that she would rather do it herself, as a practice of Transfiguration on a scale she had not yet attempted. She did rather well; she wasn't a straight-O student for nothing, after all, even if Professor Grindelwald still thought her dueling, while clever, was a bit slow. And with a teacher like Professor Minerva McGonagall, Transfiguration had always been one of her strongest wanded subjects. The only thing for which she was a little disappointed at herself was that, after several unsuccessful attempts at Free Transfiguration, she had to resort to specific spells for the central pedestal that would hold the Stone. She had also, deciding modesty was the better part of valor in that respect, elected to stick to Transfiguration without trying at Conjuration… well, she hoped no one would miss the extra desks that had been lying around the Classroom when she'd gotten there.

Monday came, bringing floating pumpkins, candy untold, the return of Grandmasters Weasley & Weasley's Stingy Jack — now a fixture of Hallowe'en at Hogwarts —, and a very irate Snape.

It wasn't that Professor Snape didn't enjoy Hallowe'en, as far as Hermione could tell; some uncharitable soul might even say it was the only day of the year where he wouldn't seem out of place in a crowd. Knowing Snape's character fairly well by then, Tsh, who had followed her down to breakfast, enquired as to the reason for his display of overstated anger. Hermione answered that with Hallowe'en came "tricks and treats", and Snape was clearly _not_ looking forward to getting countless instances of the former from the Weasley Twins and of the latter from Professor Dumbledore, all throughout the day.

This prompted the inquisitive snake to ask exactly what Hallowe'en _was_ — which took most of an hour to explain to begin with — and from there their conversation moved on to what parties and holidays were, and the roots of Muggles' superstitions about ghosts and ghoulies, and how those bled back into Wizarding culture…

…and all in all, when Tsh finally cut off their chat by asking for some water to drink, his hisses groing raspy and hoarse, Hermione realized that she had been sitting in the dormitory with Tsh for the whole morning.

And then some.

She had missed lunch.

"Dammit."

Scowling and grumbling, Hermione retrieved her Time-Turner from the bottom of her trunk, where she kept it in the week-ends; having done so, she headed to one of the password-protected alcoves nearest to Gryffindor Tower, which she liked to use for Time-Turning.

"Okay," she mumbled to herself, still frowning, "let's be careful. It's past one p.m., I… yes, but I don't want to go back two full hours, or else I'll still have to wait to eat, and I'm getting _hungry_ … one hour, then, just one hour—"

Af took a deep breath and turned the hourglass of her Time-Turner _very slowly_ , as she did when it was essential that she get the timespan exactly right.

It was the most precise way to use a Time-Turner — but not, she had read, the safest, nor the most comfortable. For that brief moment when one _was_ Time-Turning, shifting from one time to another, one would exist _out_ of time, just like one briefly existed _out_ of space during Apparition or Portkey-travel. Call it limbo, non-being, the Void Between Worlds or the Time Vortex, but it was not a good place for a physical being to stay for too long, and you might catch glimpses of other times, of other places, or of other time-travelers.

And like any non-Unspeakable-approved time-manipulations, remembering any information learned in the Land of Never Time could lead to paradoxes. _Nasty_ ones.

Trying to exploit the mediation technique that Albus had begun to teach her just last Saturday in her latest Occlumency lesson, Hermione shut her eyes, ears and mind as she small piece of enchanted glass revolved slowly around her fingers—

something _whizzed_ past her ear, what could it—

— _no, no, don't think about it, forget it!_ —

—and she was back to 12:23.

With a sigh of relief, she pocketed the Time-Turner — she couldn't have McGonagall notice her wearing on a week-end; not that she had done anything too reckless with it, but it would only bring a lot of unnecessary questions and needless fuss — and headed down to meet her friends at the Table.

"Hello there!"

"'ell-uh, 'h'mi'ne…"

"Ron, don't talk while you're chewing," she chastised, playful.

"Hmf," Ron grunted back, shrugging and smiling.

"Hermione!" said Ginny, "where have you _been_?"

"In the dorms," she answered as she sat down. "Why? Have you been looking for me?"

Ginny's pale skin blushed.

"…Because you had a Hallowe'en trick ready just for me?"

The Weasley blushed even redder.

"Hey," she said, putting a reassuring hand on the other girl's. "Ginny. You don't have to feel bad for trying to trick me. That's more or less the opposite of the holiday's spirit."

"Unless, of course," said Luna, who had abruptly dropped her spoon into her bowl of soup and looked up, "you subscribe to my _father_ 's theory about the _true_ nature of Hallowe'en's _tricks and treats._ "

"And what's that?" Ron asked, eager for a laugh.

"Glad you asked," said Luna, who stood up on the bench, better to lecture the rest of Gryffindor. "This all dates back to the year 1874, when the treacherous Muggle sportsman Trick McSorley organized a secret meeting between him and a congregation of doctors. You understand, the point of a Muggle Doctor is that he _treats_ people."

"That's… wait, no, that can't—" Harry spluttered.

Hermione would probably have said the same thing a few years ago, but by now she was surprised at Harry's continued confusion.

"I know what you're going to say," Luna added with a smart grin. " _But Hallowe'en dates back to ancient times! It can't have been founded by Muggles in the 19th century!_ "

 _This_ time it was Hermione's turn to be stunned. Had Luna… had Luna just said something that _made logical sense_?! She couldn't resits a quick look up to check whether the sky-ceiling wasn't, perchance, about to crash down on them all while a seven-headed dragon rose from the depths of the dungeons to bring down judgement.

"But that's only those of you with no knowledge of Muggles at all," the Lovegood girl explained. "Because Muggle Doctors aren't limited by time and space. They have these ever-so-convenient little blue boxes…"

Luna found it difficult to continue as most of the Muggle-born students at the table (and, once word spread, a few nearby) burst out laughing.

Once she had sufficiently calmed down, Hermione finally began eating her soup…

…which tasted like candy.

"Why does the soup taste like candy?"

"The who what tastes what now?!" Harry, Ginny and Maximilian said in chorus.

(Meanwhile, Luna said something more like "The Rotfang Conspiracy has struck again," which was resolutely ignored by the rest of the table.)

"This soup," Hermione stressed, holding up her bowl. "It looks like ordinary vegetable soup — but it's… sweet. It tastes like liquefied confectionaries."

Harry frowned in thought.

"You think Dumbledore might be behind this?" he suggested.

"That's not a bad idea," Hermione complimented. "But… wait. Does _your_ soup taste like that?"

Harry, Ginny, Maximilian and even Luna all shook their heads.

Hermione was about to begin investigating based on this evidence when something caught the corner of her eye. Ron, still enthusiastically digging into his bowl of soup, paying the rest of them little mind — as usual. Feeling mischievous, she bent right next to his ear and _yelped_ :

" _RON!"_

" _Eek!_ " the boy screeched, almost falling off the bench in his recoil. "…Hey! What's the big idea scaring a bloke like that, Hermione?!"

"It _is_ Halloween," she justified herself. "But either way, I was _talking_ to you."

"And I was _eating_ ," Ron insisted, gesturing at his half-finished bowl. "Hermione, I know you like asking questions and stuff, and it's wonderful, we love you for that, never change, but _sometimes_ people are doing something _else_ than standing ready and answering your summons, okay? You're not the boss of us."

"Wellll," she argued, "I _am_ a little bit. Kind of. You know, with Cornelius and all that. But anyway! What I was asking you actually has to do with your food."

"Yeah?"

"Does it taste like candy?"

Ron opened his mouth; closed it again; took another sip of the soup to be sure.

His eyes widened.

"…it does," he finally answered. "…Merlin's pants! It _does_! What the hell?!"

"Ah. And you ate through half of it without noticing," Hermione deadpanned.

"…'was hungry," Ron mumbled, defensive, arms crossed.

"Okay, okay," she said. "So: just you and me. Why would somebody _do_ that? No, wrong question. Who _would_ do that? Changing the taste of food is advanced culinary charmswork…"

"Really?" Ron asked, surprised. "But… Mum does it all the time."

"Oh? …Wait…" Hermione said, the wheels in her mind turning. "…A-hah!"

Pushing aside the bowl, she hopped off her seat and walked to the other end of the Gryffindor Table, where she found a certain duo of identical upper-year redheads.

"George? Fred?" she called in a falsely sweet voice, drumming the fingers of her left hand along her wand.

"…Why if it isn't dear Mademoiselle Granger!" George began, opening his arms wide.

"Why, if we had anticipated such fine company—"

"Stop being charming, it doesn't suit you," she interrupted Fred. "Now. You wouldn't happen to know anything about a certain sugary soup?"

"Oooh, she noticed," Fred loudly whispered at his twin.

"A little display of Hallowe'en spirit," George told her with a wink.

"Okay, but why do it to your fellow Junior Marauders?" Hermione asked.

"Well… here is what we thought," George explained. "We already play tricks on people all year long… so we figured folks wouldn't really notice anything he could do on Hallowe'en, except if we made it _about_ phantoms and spirits, and we'd rather not because we're trying to distance ourselves from Peeves."

"See, we've associated with him so much," Fred added, "that Filch has started punishing _us_ whenever _he_ does something. And if we're going to have the longest, most deplorable track record in all of Hogwarts' history, we want it to be all our own, y'see?"

"Getting back to the topic," George continued, "we decided that for once, instead of pranking the regular crowd, we'd up the ante by pranking each other."

"You don't want to know what we did to Padfoot II," Fred said conspiringly.

* * *

Meanwhile, in his house in Hogsmeade, Padfoot the Second, known as Gerald White to civilians, was desperately trying to understand how his Animagus transformation had resulted in his becoming a black _cat_. And also, how he could change back.

* * *

"Alright…" Hermione said, "but why only Ron and I? Why skip Maximilian and Harry?"

"Ah. Well," George said slowly. "We actually _did_ try to play a prank on Sir Ladlehead, but _somehow_ the hex didn't work on him."

"Which is too bad," Fred butted in, "because it would have been ruddy hilarious."

"As for Sir Scarhead," said his brother, "we _had_ a spectacular Quidditch prank ready for him, but he didn't so much as climb on a broom today."

"Wonder why," said Fred.

"Yeah," nodded George. "Usually Harry and Ronny jump at every opportunity to fly about. You'd think on a no-class day like this… but no, instead he's sort of vanished for most of this morning."

"Sulking under a certain Invisibility knickknack, we assume," the other twin clarified.

Hermione swallowed.

"Fred… George…" she began, "today there are other reasons on top of that, but you… you know what day this is, don't you?"

"…It's Hallowe'en?…" Fred suggested dumbly.

"Also known as…?" she prompted.

"October the 31st?"

" _Also known as?!_ " she insisted.

"…Samhain?…" Fred suggested in a tiny voice. "Macbrains, you're scaring me."

" _The day. That James. And. Lily. Potter. DIED._ " Hermione martelled her words. "You insensitive dolts."

…

"Oh."

"Ah."

"Yes."

"Eh-hem."

"We'll… avoid pranking the Harry."

"Quite."

* * *

Hermione had returned to eating her (non-candied) food for the remainder of lunchtime, stealing cautious glances at Harry, but avoiding conversation with him. She saw him leave without eating dessert, visibly headed back to Gryffindor Tower. Taking her chance, she grabbed an apple to eat on the way and went after the boy, whom she caught up with in the Common Room.

"Harry…"

"What _is_ it?" he flared, whirling around to face her. Realizing what tone he'd used, he quickly added: "…Er… I'm sorry, Hermione… I didn't mean to snap at you like that, I just…"

"It's alright," she said, sympathetic. "I… imagine that you're a bit stressed, hm? Because of…"

Harry nodded weakly.

Neither knowing what to say, the two friends sat down in one of the puffy red sofas of the Gryffindor Common Room.

"…What is it you're afraid of?" Hermione asked finally.

"Well… What if… what if she — what if my mother doesn't _like_ me?" Harry asked, the distress evident in his voice.

"Oh, sure, _that_ 's clearly going to happen," Hermione ironized, softly elbowing Harry's side. "Harry, you're a good person, a great student of magic, and a wonderful friend. What's not to like for a son?"

Harry could only sigh.

"…Or…"

"Yes?"

"Or…" Harry asked, biting his lip. "…what if _I_ don't like _her_?"

Hermione frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I've never _met_ her, or dad," Harry struggled to explain. "You don't always love your family… what's the saying? You choose your friends, but not your relatives… I mean, just look at Alastair! And Aunt Petunia _is_ my blood relative — never stopped from being bloody terrible, until we got Kaiser. I—"

"Harry!" Hermione said firmly, clasping his shoulders. "Don't say things like that. You're only hurting yourself. You love Gerald, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Harry said with a forced smile.

"And Professor Lupin?"

"Sure."

"And Albus? I know you're not friends with him like I am, but you like and respect him, don't you?"

"…yes," Harry said absently, "but what's your point?"

"They were all friends with your parents," Hermione told him, a little disappointed that he hadn't figured it out. "They all admired them and loved them dearly. True, maybe you won't be… close to them, not at first anyway; though maybe you will, you know, you can't be sure yet. But let me tell you that it would be absurd if you didn't at least get along _alright_ with one or both of them."

A hopeful grin splattered on her face, Hermione looked at Harry, and saw his features soften, saw his smile grow.

"Okay. Okay…" he said. "That… makes sense. …Hermione, you are such a professor."

"What?"

"I felt like I should really have taken notes while you were speaking," Harry continued, in a growingly humorous tone. "

"Oh, _you_ ," Hermione giggled. "…Alright, { _joker_ }. Now stop worrying and go have some fun with Chang or something."

Harry looked at her oddly, cocking his head.

"You mean Cho?"

"…Yes, her," Hermione said. "I never know which of her name is the given name and which is the surname. It doesn't fit at all with how Chinese name are supposed to be formulated, did you know that?"

"People don't always work like books say they should, did you know that?" Harry parroted. "…Either way, why would I want to be with Cho?…"

It was Hermione's turn to be confused.

"Er, aren't you two… I thought you…?"

"Dating?" Harry guessed, laughing nervously. "No! Not for several weeks. Hermione, we went on just the one date… neither of us really had fun. It was just a try."

"Oh," Hermione said, cursing herself for her awkward mistake and trying to regain control of the conversation. "So you're… unattached now?"

"Of course not," he answered. "Keep up, Hermione. I'm with Ginny now!"

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and _seethed:_

"See? _This_ is why I don't do 'dating'!"

"Okay, fine!" Harry said quickly, edging away from her. "Let's drop the subject! Y-You brought it up, remember?!"

"Yes, yes, sorry," she apologized. "I just… you other teenagers and your messy love-lives are so _confusing_. Cute, I guess, and I wish you all the happiness, but _confusing_. Do you know even Tsh is trying to get a '{ _female-friend_ }' now? _Ugh_! …Anyway, you, er, whatever, just enjoy the afternoon however you like. …But do try to be on time, and get yourself well-dressed beforehand. You want to make a good impression."

"…Alright," Harry said, unconvinced.

"No, I mean in," she stressed. "Fresh robes. And you _wear the hat_."

"I don't want to wear the hat!" Harry defended himself. "I don't like wizard's hats! When we were eleven I thought they looked fun, but they're heavy and stuffy and you keep losing them whenever you go through a doorframe. I'm through with them! Hell, most everyone past Third-Year is too. I don't see _you_ wearing the hat."

"I'm different," Hermione argued primly. "I have so much hair, I'd have to use a sticking charm to make it stand, and that would just be silly."

"Hypocrite," Harry jabbed playfully as he walked out of the Common Room.

Just before he closed the portrait-frame-door behind him, Hermione shouted:

" _Wear the ruddy hat!_ "

* * *

Come five-o-clock, she came to greet Harry at the Resurrectorium. After complimenting himself on his impeccable clothing (hat included), she ushered him into the room; she had made it all of purple stone, with ebony furniture and violet draperies; there were a number of chairs and tables artfully scattered about, a framed copy of an illustration of the _Tale of the Three Brothers_ adorned the furthest walls, and in the centre of the room stood a large white pedestal over which the Resurrection Stone gently hovered.

She went over the use of the Stone with Harry, then began counting off the hour and left him to his long-awaited meeting with James and Lily Potter — this was not for her to see, never mind how fascinating.

* * *

Harry emerged from the Resurrectorium smiling and starry-eyed, and on his cheeks were clear signs that tears of joy had streaked his white face earlier.

"So! Did it go well, or what?" Hermione asked him.

"Wonderfully," Harry answered, before adding with a grin: "But she didn't like the hat."

* * *

Two hours later, Snape also looked radiant when he walked out of the Resurrectorium; and unlike Harry, he was still weeping.

 _So he does have a heart!_

Hermione didn't dare address the Potions Master as he slowly walked away from the Resurrectorium and back towards his quarters; it was obvious that he wanted nothing more than think about what had happened, and, possibly, rethink some of his life choices based on Harry's mother's advice.

Unfortunate, circumstances disturbed him in her place, in the form of a very panicked Mad-Eye Moody, riding an improbable flying contraption that only vaguely resembled a broomstick, crashing through the window opposite the entrance to the Resurrectorium. The one-legged Knight of the Phoenix stumbled out of the smoking remains of his vehicle and lurched himself at her and Snape, shouting:

"Help! War! EMERGENCY! _AZKABAN HAS FALLEN!_ "


	54. The Azkaban Crisis

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Ladies and gentlemen, a crisis! This may be a comedy, but not all is fun and game when Barty Crouch Junior, the Crimson Heir of Voldemort, is on the loose! Be sure to tell me what you think of this chapter in a review, or otherwise show your support if you like the story by using the Favorite or Follow buttons. Many thanks to all who have already done so. And now…_

 **CHAPTER LI: _The Azkaban Crisis_**

If there was one way in which the Order of the Phoenix was superior to the Ministry of Magic, it was its efficiency. Within ten minutes, most of the Knights had gathered in an improvised meeting room. Harry and Snape sat on opposite sides of the table, giving each other markedly awkward looks. Hermione was on Harry's right, and she would have loved to ask her friend just what Lily had told the both of them to get them in such a state; but she had someone else to direct her attention to — Cornelius Fudge.

Cornelius Fudge was not, of course, a member of the Order, but he was definitely someone felt Hermione should be there, if only so they could keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't panic and surrender the country.

For the time being, Fudge wasn't being too bothersome, simply looking down and whimpering softly.

"My friends…" Dumbledore began once all had sat down.

"No," Hermione cut him off. "Albus, no time for a speech. Emergency. Moody?"

"Atta-girl, Granger" said the half-dead ex-Auror, flashing a toothless smile. "So I was on the trail o'Crouch Jr.…"

"You _found_ him then?" Emmeline Vance said breathlessly. "Mad-Eye! Why didn't you _tell_ us?!"

"D'you think I'm mad?!" Moody shouted back, his one good eye widening comically. "Any of ya might've been Polyjuiced impostors! He was always good with the Potion, Crouch, I checked his records—"

"Then how can you tell that's not the case right now?" Hermione asked snidely.

"I can't," said Moody. "But there are enough of you here that even with a Time-Turner, Crouch couldn't be _all_ of you."

"But…" Harry thought aloud, "didn't Crouch just break a lot of his accomplices from Azkaban?"

Moody froze.

"Harry, you're not helping," an irate Hermione whispered at Harry.

"-AAAAAARH!" shouted Moody, suddenly jumping off his chair and climbing on it. " _Stay back_ , you Death Eater _scum_!"

"Mad-Eye, you're not making sense," Emmeline Vance tried to calm him down. "If we were Death Eaters, why would we go through all this trouble just so you could tell us the details of 'our' escape — something we already know?"

"Shut up, _Lestrange!_ " roared Moody, his wand shaking.

"T-that's right!" said the bald little man, Fletcher. "I know a thing or two 'bout _criminal mentality_. Lemme tell you, once you're bust outta jail, you don't go around tryin' to bring a big bad Auror _to_ you. You skip town pronto!"

"Easy for you to say, Wilkes!" replied Moody, whose Eye was swiveling around at great speed. "You may sound all smart and rational but you won't get me, you wont! Hah! Old Mad-Eye got a few tricks up his sleeves!"

"Alright, desperate times call for desperate measures," Jester G. White whispered to Harry.

White threw himself to the floor and crawled to Moody's feet:

"Mad-Eye! It's really me, but you're right! They've replaced everyone else!" he sobbed. "And we're next if we don't act!… Here—"

From one of his pockets Jester drew a small flask.

"—drink this, Mad-Eye, it's the antidote, to Polyjuice, they can't copy you while this is in your system—"

The panicked Moody's eye narrowed; he snatched the bottle out of Jester's hand and downed it, immediately, falling back on his seat.

Smiling like an idiot.

"There," Jester announced to the rest of them. "Pity, I'd been meaning to save it for you, Snape. But good to know the Marauder Herbal Tea of Utter Calmness still works wonders."

Snape gave a quick glare towards his old nemesis, but, to his credit, shook it off and moved towards Mad-Eye.

"Moody," said Snape, "I know how you're feeling — indeed, I'm probably the only wizard on Earth who knows what you're feeling — but never mind that, it's annoying but it will wear off. Now l—"

"Y'know…" Moody answered in an inebriated voice, a goofy smile plastered on his face, "y'know, you… could still… be lying to me… be a Death Eater… heh! Yeah, but somehow I… don't care…"

"Yes yes yes," Snape snapped, impatient. "Now tell us what happened, with Azkaban."

He told them.

He had to do so through a sea of inappropriate giggles and inopportune smiles and inexplicable humming to himself, but he told them.

* * *

After weeks of searching, buying and breaking and recrafting every Dark Detector in the black market, and hounding every criminal he had dirt on, Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody had finally caught the scent of Barty Crouch Junior. That scent had taken the form of a peculiar magical trail, that of a vehicle, one no one but the most paranoid of Aurors had thought to test for, because this was Britain, not India, dash it all. It was how Barty Crouch had moved around, escaping every magical detector the Order threw at him.

A magic carpet.

A magic carpet enchanted with layered invisibility and untraceability charms, of course — Crouch was _clever_ — but none of this was enough so to fool Moody on a mission. Using magics that even under the effect of the Herbal Tea, he would _not_ disclose, the cantankerous crimefighter had followed the Death Eater from Knockturn Alley, hoping to follow him to his accomplices, if he had any, or else to a location more appropriate than Knockturn Alley to duel and arrest the man.

Only upon the Disillusioned Crouch's arrival at a cold and black shore he knew all too well did Moody realize what was happening.

Invisibility fooled not the blind. The Dark Wizard and the concealed Auror soon found a crowd of Dementors advancing towards them, some already lifting their hood as they preemptively savored the feast of the escapee's soul.

And Moody saw something that no Dark Wizard had ever been brave enough, mad enough, brazen enough to try in the face of a crowd of advancing Dementors.

Barty Crouch Junior cancelled his Disillusion, revealing dark crimson robes, _charged_ at the Guardians of Azkaban, and _laughed_.

He ran forwards with a mad look in his eye and a twitch in the corner of his lips and the very Devil in his cackle, and as he laughed and ran and laugh, his demented laughter changed and warped, and suddenly he was speaking words — old and terrible words, words that never must be uttered — foul words of hatred and destruction and aberration.

And from the madman's wand there burst forth a demon more ancient, more powerful , more terrible than the Dementors themselves, than old Lord Ekrizdis who had raised Azkaban from the cold Black Sea.

Mad-Eye Moody feared many thing; some said he feared everything indiscriminately, but that was not true. He feared a rabbit more than any living human, but there was still a sense of proportion to it. He feared the rabbit, but knew to fear the tiger even more.

His heart nearly stopped — it would have, if not for a certain amulet he had wrenched from the withered hands of an Aztec mummy in 1957.

A tidal wave of Fiendfyre had spread its scalding wings over Azkaban.

* * *

"Hang on," Hermione said, interrupting Moody's story. "This 'Fiendfyre' can _kill Dementors_? …Not that I'm advocating genocide here, though by Merlin I don't like Dementors, but… why all the complicated Azkaban set-up to keep the Dementors around and docile if you could just wipe them out?"

"That's not how it _works_ , idiot," Snape growled. "Fiendfyre is some of the darkest magic in the world — not the hardest to master, which, in a way, makes it worse, any fool with a sufficiently unhinged conscience can create it, though they can't _control_ it — but darkest, ooh yes. The cagey bureaucrats," he snorted in the direction of Fudge, who shrunk back behind his bowler, "who populate our government would never authorize its use."

"Not now, but when Dementors first… appeared," Hermione proposed. "I know the history. The Dementors were thought extinct, and good riddance at that, when they became Wizarding Britain's _problem_ when they found Azkaban and all the foul things Ekrizdis had done there. Including bringing the Dementor race back from the dead, it seems. Now all of his other creations, the ice golems and the Stranglers and the Raven Shades and all the things too awful for the books to talk about, they were wiped out within months, the greatest team of Aurors and Curse-Breakers in centuries was there — they could've done anything as long as it was for the greater good — why didn't they use it _then?_ "

" _Because_ ," Professor Snape said, "you are missing something about the very nature of Fiendfyre. Fiendfyre is _alive_ , and it is immortal. As long as it is in contact with any physical matter — even the tiniest _atom_ — then, _Lady Macbrains_ , the Fiendfyre will cling to life and it will _keep burning_."

"To-to life," Hermione repeated, stuttering under the weight of the idea she feared she was beginning to see.

" _Yes_ ," stressed the Potioneer. "Fiendfyre is no mere curse, Granger. It creates true life, of the most horrid sort. It births a veritable _demon_ , and one even more indestructible than the Dementor you would slay through it. Fiendfyre cannot be unmade, it cannot be repealed, it cannot be reasoned with."

"I… that… it… I…"

"At a loss for words at last," Snape noted with a bitter grin. "Yes, I thought you might be. _Hmf_. At least you have the decency to see the horror of Fiendfyre for what it is… even if, somehow, I fear your horror comes from sympathizing with the wrong… _individual_."

Hermione forced a quick guilty smile. He wasn't entirely wrong. Fiendfyre, from how they described it, had all the horrors of a nuclear weapon, but to make it even worse — and what Muggle would have thought it could possibly be worse? — it was a _sentient_ nuclear weapon. A nuclear blast with a mind, and all it knew from inception was a craving for survival and destruction…

"It's…"

"No, no, _please,_ " said Snape with conspicuous forced politeness. "Don't. We're on a schedule. Let's take advantage of your temporary speechlessness and let Mr Moody finish his tale, hm? Mad-Eye?"

"Why yes… yes!…" Moody hiccoughed, still with his silly smile. "Very kind of you… now then, what happened…"

* * *

As soon as he could jolt himself from his terror-induced paralysis, Moody had cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself and splashed into the sea — the noise thankfully disguised by the crackling, whooshing sound of the Fiendfyre. And he'd kept watch.

Crouch, the gaunt scarlet silhouette against the backdrop of the flames, had Transfigured a slab of stone into a high pedestal from which he could control the Fiendfyre, ordering it about, using his wand like a conductor's baton and raving orders. And the titan of fire obeyed. Tendrils of flames shot out and struck down the fleeing Dementors, battering rams of concentrated inferno _melted_ the ancient gates of Azkaban — and not a spark touched Crouch or the vile prisoners he had set about to free.

Powerless and aghast, Mad-Eye Moody watched as Jugson and Dolohov and the Lestranges and Rookwood and Mulciber, all the blackguards he had worked so hard and given so much to see behind bars, ran out of the burning castle, crooked smiles and crazed eyes illuminated by the reddish light of the Fiendfyre.

" _FREE!_ " Crouch yelled to them in his delirium, "you are free, my companions! Our Lord's Will is accomplished! Follow me, brothers and sisters of Darkness, and we shall rain down _terror_ upon Britain like never before! The world will tremble and _fall_!"

Most accepted this, and rose in a victorious clamor. One Death Eater, though, still addled by the Dementors' aura, did not seem so enthusiastic.

"Crouch, you good-for-nothin' lazeabout wacko!" he said — or so Moody paraphrased. "And what good is blowing up the frackin' island? We got no wands, no brooms, we sure as hell can't Apparate. We're stranded. And it's the Dementors who have our food! The Dementors you're destroying or drivin' away!"

To this Barty Crouch, halting the Fiendfyre, smiled and said:

"Driving away! Hahah! Very good, Mr Jugson, how very observant. And how do you suppose your warden are planning to flee? You don't think they'll swim!…"

Those prisoners who were sane enough to process his words stopped their clamoring and running about and looked around, trying to see _where_ the fleeing Dementors were headed.

It took a solid minute for the freezing escapees to see it, but at last someone yelled:

"There's a ship! By Merlin! There's a _ship!_ "

" _Yesss_!" howled Crouch. "You couldn't see it, you fools, the Dementors are mind-mumblers, remember? They don't want anyone to know just what their resources are, so they erase your memory the moment you notice it, but now, a-hah! _Now_!… Now that I'm _killing_ them one-by-one, the miserable wretches, we're starting to see it… quickly! Quickly, Death Eaters! Climb aboard, and we'll set sail!"

Moody, of course, had always known about the boat. He was far too paranoid for something as feeble as the Dementors' amnesia prevent him from knowing everything there was to know about the one place he felt safe enough to drop off those he captured. Indeed, he had clamored to the Ministry that the Dementors should not be allowed control of that boat, because if they ever turned traitor again, as they had during the War, they could allow prisoners its use — a situation worryingly close to what had jist happened. But of course, every time he brought up the issue, the clerks and bureaucrats of the Azkaban Security Officials and Very Important Wizards' department told them they had no recollection of any ship stationed at Azkaban, and credited his demands to his supposed "insanity".

The Dementors of Azkaban had little in the way of possessions. There were over six hundred on the island, but a ship the size of a small yacht — though considerably more creepy-looking — was all that was needed for their evacuation, and a single black leather suitcase was all they needed to pack. Thus, once the suitcase had been retrieved and placed within the care of one of the oldest and wisest Dementors on the island, the dark entities had begun to board the ship.

Crouch, however, did quick work of directing a pillar of fire towards the vessel, aiming it just right, barely singing the hull but obliterating most of the boarded Dementors and knocking the rest overboard.

"Gentlemen… _to the mainland!_ " the leader announced.

Moody had barely had the time to attach a tracking spell to the ghoulish boat before it set sail with impressive speed and vanished into the fog, leaving the Fiendfyre, burning fiercer than ever, to continue ravaging the island unbidden.

Ruling that he would achieve nothing by confronting an entire horde of Death Eaters, all but wandless though they may be, Moody had Reillusioned himself, de-shrunken the emergency broomstick he kept inside his left ear, and flown to Hogwarts to warn them.

* * *

"OooooOoooohhhooohoooh… baaAAaAAAAAaaHahAhAh…heeeh…"

Hermione was drumming her mauve fingers on the oaken table in annoyance. It had been bad enough when Cornelius Fudge was _whimpering_ , but once he had learned the exact details, the Minister of Magic had begun _howling_ outright, and it was getting on everyone's nerves. Unfortunately, she was the only one who could stop it, as the only person with enough experience of Fudge diplomacy to calm him down without letting him take her as a scape-goat — his primary defence mechanism.

Thus, she was stuck with the _noise_ until she found a way to reassure the poor man. Most inconvenient, when there were far more urgent matters to be thought about.

Hm.

"…Minister Fudge," she tried, doing her best sympathetic voice. "I know it sounds very scary, but you mustn't listen to everything Mad-Eye says."

"…N…no?…" he sniffled.

"No," she said with a motherly smile. "He is a very good wizard, but you know how he is, always worried about everything. He used to think _I_ was dangerous. _Me!_ "

"Oh… really?… You - you must be right,… such a charming, harmless child…" said Fudge with a small smile piercing through his sobs.

Hermione was fuming inside, but never mind.

"This is a _serious_ situation, fine," she granted, continuing her argument, "but it's nothing we can't solve. The Death Eaters are a wandless band with nowhere to go and no You-Know-Who to fall back to."

"That is true…" Fudge nodded, and he put his bowler hat back on, which was a very good sign indeed, "…this is true. But what of… of Crouch Junior? He does seem like a dangerous wizard… oh, my stars and little comets, Fiendfyre! A master of Fiendfyre!…"

"We _already_ knew about Crouch Junior," she reminded the politician. "If the additional Death Eaters are more or less negligible, then we're more or less in the same situation we've been for months."

"Good point, good point," said Fudge, who had taken out a green silk handkerchief from his pocket and was wiping away the last of his tears.

"Besides," Hermione finished, "they lot are currently stuck somewhere in the North Sea, trying to sail a boat that was designed for creatures who don't give a damn about cold, or lack of food supplies, or drowning if it really comes down to it. They're not exactly in what you'd call a winning position. It's not the Death Eaters we should worry about right now. It's the Fiendfyre and… and…"

Her eyes widened.

"Oh God," she breathed.

"What is it, Hermione?" Dumbledore asked. "Your expression has frozen into one of ghastly discovery. It's very disconcerting. What have you thought of?"

"Professor," she said, "the Dementors. The Dementors can't drown. I believe Fiendfyre can't reach underwater, nor fly?"

"No, thankfully not," said Snape, "or else, believe me, Earth would long be nothing more than a pile of ash."

"Well," she continued her reasoning, growing more and more certain that she was right, "the Dementors would know this, wouldn't they. That's why they tried to flee by boat. And… why would they give this idea up just because they lost the boat? Dementors — Dementors _can't drown_. We saw that when they attacked the Express before coming to Hogwarts, remember? If they fall into a body of water they'll just keep walking at the bottom until they reach land, they don't _like_ it because they're so cold they end up covered in frost when they get out, but they can _do_ it, they definitely would if their… well, their _unlife_ was on the line…"

"Oh! Oh," Fudge nodded in understand. "They're not dead then. Well. That's… I can't say I would have mourned them, but that's not such bad news at all. They serve the Ministry, after all."

"Yes, but they're not going to the Ministry," said Hermione. "Why would they report to the Ministry?"

"Well, why ever _shouldn't_ th—"

"If Gringotts fell apart, Minister," she interrupted the imbecile, "would you expect the Goblins to seek help at the _Ministry_?"

"Ah, I see," he backtracked. "But then… but then, where are they going?"

"Oh, I'm afraid I know just where they're going," Hermione faltered. "Albus, what is something you have always said, always reinstated, words of hope that you must have told every inmate of Azkaban at some point in their life? Beautiful, unforgettable words of pure hope, delicacies the Dementors would have been sure to absorb from the prisoners' minds?"

Dumbledore _gasped_ audibly.

"What? What _is_ it?!" Fudge demanded.

"Help…" Dumbledore quoted, choked, "help will… always be… given at Hogwarts… to those who… who ask for it…"

* * *

KNOCK

.

KNOCK

.

 **KNOCK**


	55. Parlays

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _…is this chapter any good? Just coming off the haze of writing it, I feel like it's a bit insubstantial. But I'd like to think I still got a few good ideas in there. (…Inevitable segue coming up in 3…2…1…) …Say! You know how you could answer that question for me? By posting a review! I really appreciate all reviews. Thanks to all who have left reviews so far, or Followed and Favorited "The Parselmouth of Gryffindor"! You make it worth it for this humble writer! …And now, back to our program._

 **CHAPTER LII: _Parlays_**

"Hello, hello, _hello._ "

* * *

Of all the voices the Order of the Phoenix had expected to hear after Cornelius Fudge worked up the courage to open the door, this had not been one of them. It wasn't a Dementor's unearthly words or its uncanny rasp, nor was it the demented cackle of Barty Crouch Junior, or the sensible Scottish voice of Professor McGonagall, or the acidic, nasal whining of Caretaker Filch, or even the grating giggle of Peeves the Poltergeist.

Instead, it was male, gruff, deep, and ever-so-slightly ironic.

"…Aah! Alexander!" said Professor Albus Dumbledore, the first to rise from the table, arms spread for a welcoming embrace. "What a pleasant surprise!"

Awkwardly, the raggedy Professor Max returned the favor, though there was no mirth to it and he withdrew quickly.

Fudge conspicuously leaned towards the sitting Hermione's ear, whispering:

"…Ah, erm, pardon me, but — who _is_ this character?"

"Oh, just an ilpoat," said Hermione, eyes intent on the newcomer.

Fudge kept gaping for a minute, obviously torn between his not-inconsiderable pride, and the fact that he had no idea what 'ilpoat' meant. As usual, the former won the internal debate over any sort of common sense, and the Minister drew back from her — taking slow, shuffling steps backwards, away from Max and Dumbledore, to finally sit back down on the other side of the room, trying his best to look inconspicuous.

"Wwait a _smash_!" said Moody, who, by now, was limping up and swatting at his cheeks to wipe off the remains of a goofy smile. "Max! He's — you're Alexander S. Max?"

"Yyy _es_ …?" answered the Ghoul Studies scholar, considering Mad-Eye with an odd leer in his sunken, shiny eyes.

"That's not, that's not _possible,_ " stammered the Knight of the Phoenix, furiously waving his arms about to shake off his lethargy. He pointed an accusing finger at the black-bearded professor. "You're _dead!_ "

" _Death_?" chortled Max. "Of course! Of course! Can't get enough of the stuff!"

"Don't get smart with me, Max! You can't be _alive_! You _taught_ me when I was a wee lad, and at the time, you were—"

" _That's… right!_ " Professor Max barked back, swiping Moody's walking stick from beneath the old warrior, who barely avoid a fall. "I _taught_ you! I… _taught_ you, _Alastor_ … heheh!… Now don't forget your place!"

"Nonsense, _fibs!_ " insisted Moody, though he did take a few steps back. " _You_ didn't teach me, it can't be. And Max was stuck in Azkaban! With _Fiendfyre_! Nobody could survive _that_! _I_ barely survived that!"

"Yet. You. _Did,_ " repeated the other man. "Grhah!"

He whirled around, preparing to walk away.

"I… will be in my _office_ , if you should need me… feeding my tarantulas," he said. "Although, please don't. _Need_ me."

"Wait!… Professor?" Hermione called.

"What is it, _nondescript witch girl_?" said Max, without looking at her.

"My name is Hermione Granger as you well know," she corrected, "and for the record, I'm half-violin now, not _quite_ a witch. But I digress. There are two things I wanted to tell you. First, thanks again for your monograph, it was ever so helpful. Second… we were… expecting someone else, when you came in. Do you have any idea…?"

"The… _Dementors_?" he guessed. "Hahh… yes, of course, the Dementors… Yes. _Yes!_ They should be coming along… oh, _any_ time now, really. Hrrr. Bad-bye."

* * *

After a few minutes' wait which made sure there were no Dementors coming in the _immediate_ future, the identity of Professor Max was explained at length to those of the Order who did not know him, first by Maximilian Candy, and then by Max's star pupil Alastor Moody. Moody still insisted there was something fishy about the return of his old mentor, but he had tried seventeen wandless, wordless revealing and detecting spells over the course of their short conversation, and come out empty-handed. Fudge, who was still a bit shaken by the whole thing, took a while to be convinced to drop the matter, but eventually, reminding him of _who_ Mad-Eye Moody _was_ did the trick.

In a splendid display of comedic timing, Professor Dumbledore had just begun telling the Order that the threat was delayed and they could disband when another set of forceful knocks rattled the doors of their meeting room. This time it wasn't quite KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK, more of a

BOOM—

BOOM—

 _BOOM!_

 _"…_ _Aaah!_ " said Fudge with one of his trademark forced smiles, doing his best impression of Dumbledore's greeting to Professor Max. "H- that is, Mr — _Professor_ Hagrid!"

"Oh, _you_ 're here," the Groundskeeper noted without emotion, not quite knowing what to do with the plump little man awkwardly reaching _up_ for his hand to shake. "Hello. …Pr'fessor Dumbledore!"

"What is it, Hagrid?"

"They're… there're… it's…" stammered Hagrid, "I — oh, p'rfesser, yeh just got to come an'see this…"

"It's the Dementors, isn't it," Harry guessed in a tired voice, sharing a morose look with Hermione.

* * *

It was the Dementors.

Some barely standing, their singed robes covered in seaweed and bits of ice, they were a sorrier sight than anybody could have expected of a band of soul-sucking demons. Hermione had read that there were over seven hundred Dementors on Azkaban, but hardly a tenth of that lot had made it to Hogwarts.

A very tall Dementor whose hood and right sleeve had been almost entirely burned off, revealing a bald gray head and a long wrinkled arm bonier than a twig, still clung to the entire people's collective suitcase, though it had been pierced through by a crab somewhere along the way and soaked through.

The Dementors were always surrounded by an aura of despair, but where once it had seemed to be a pestilence that they projected out of malice, now no magic enabled this effect. The very sight was enough.

A large part of the Order had come down from the Castle with Patronuses ready, their heart set on booting out the wraiths from Scotland, but that resolve melted away the moment they saw the creatures shambling through the courtyard.

Dumbledore meant to step forwards, but was held back by Fudge.

"I'm the Minister," he whispered. "I'm in charge. I should handle this."

"Not so fast, laddie," said Moody, grabbing the Minister's collar. " _I_ used to _work_ for Azkaban. _I_ should handle this."

" _I_ , gentlemen, can turn _into_ a _Dementor_ ," said Maximilian, shoving himself past Mad-Eye. "Clearly _I_ should—"

"Sorry, oop, just passing through, sorry—"

Dumbledore, Fudge, Maximilian and Mad-Eye could only look in stunned silence when they realized Hermione had pushed past them with not a care in the world and was now walking straight towards the Dementors.

"Hello," she said to them. "My name is Lady Macbrains. I think some of you might remember me."

The Dementors remained still.

"And her," she added. " _Expecto Patronum._ "

 _EEEEEK!_

At the sight of her silver otter, half the Dementors emitted a sort of ear-piercing ghostly wail and drew back.

"See? As I thought," she said, satisfied, "you remember me. Now don't worry, I'm not looking to hurt you this time. Yet."

She let go of the Charm, and her Patronus vanished.

"I am given to understand," she continued, "that this time, we are all on the same side. The side that wants to stop Barty Crouch Jr."

A few of the healthier Dementors raised fists and shook them and shivered in anger.

 _Hiss! HISS!_

"Yes, yes, that's right," she said. "The fellow who cheated you, and death, and the Ministry, and is reducing your house to a crisp. That bloke. Now, bearing this in mind, and because I'm always looking to make friends, I'd be willing to let you stay at Hogwarts for a while."

" _Miss Granger_!" called Professor McGonagall, who hadn't let go of her cat Patronus. "You are _not_ in charge of this school!"

"Of course I am, Professor, do keep up," she answered. "Just ask your Portrait if you have any doubts. Oh, and kindly dismiss your Patronus, would you? This isn't helping my diplomatic relations over here."

McGonagall opened her mouth to protest but Dumbledore grabbed her hand and led her away, clearly intent on explaining a few of the basic facts of life to her, such as the fact that you did not, if you valued your continued life and happiness, contradict Hermione Granger when she was doing her thing.

"Sorry about that," Hermione told the Dementors. "So as I was saying, I am actually alright with granting you asylum for the time being, but we're going to have to work out a precise agreement, and I expect you lot to stick to it, or you'll learn to see the world from the _other_ side of prison bars, at the _least_. Is that clear?"

 _Hiss hiss rasp hiss rattle rattled ROAR —_

"Hey! _Hey!_ " she silenced the chorus of oogely-boogely vocalizations. "I realize this is Hallowe'en, but could we possibly leave the hissing and snarling to Professor Snape and skip to the negotiations already? I don't know if you realize, but it's _late_. I'm _tired_. So. I'm pretty much the humans' ambassador, apparently… Do _you_ have a… a spokesdemon I could speak to more directly?"

The Dementors shuffled around a bit, and one who wore thick, floating, inky robes separated himself from the group, hovering closer to her.

As before, he didn't speak; instead he sent his message directly into her mind, not even words like what Hermione had done with Professor Flitwick, but _concepts,_ devoid of the trappings and ambiguities of actual speech.

 _I will talk, for us all_ , he conveyed.

"Ah, very good," she answered. "Do you have a name?"

 _Dementors do not have names_ , answered the phantom, this concept-sequence drenched in clear _contempt_ for her for having even asked.

"Oh," she said. "That's rather sad, isn't it? Not to mention, confusing. We'll need to find you all some proper names."

 _Dementors **do not** have names,_ the Dementor repeated, more forcefully.

"Not yet, but you will," said Hermione. "You, for instance, look like a Rufus."

 _I am not Rufus!_

"Rufus W. Grinchy. Yes. That's right."

 _I am not! No! Negative! Bad-bad!_

It was sort of funny: as the Dementor's anger increased, its grip on concept-phrasing deteriorated from something as subtle as, or even subtler than, human speech, to the broadest of broad lines. That last concept it had sent her could only be translated as 'very negative indeed, grrrr'.

"Well, Mr Grinchy," she said, "let's begin the negotiations."

 _I am not 'Mr Grinchy'. But yes._

"To begin with," she warned, "it is simply non-negotiable that none of you will attempt to feed on the people of Hogwarts. Not their happiness, and _definitely_ not their souls."

Crossing his arms, Grinchy conveyed a vague notion of reluctant agreement.

"To be clear, when I say people of Hogwarts, that also includes the Portraits and Acromantulas and stuff. Basically, any intelligent beings are out of bounds."

The Dementor crossed his arms even more firmly, and stressed the 'reluctant' part of his message as he repeated it.

"You are also to tone down your auras of despair as much as possible," she continued, more sympathetically. "I'm not entirely sure of the extent to which you can control those, and I'm sure it must be harder in your condition, but… please try."

 _Very well_ , said the demon.

"That's the basic groundwork," she finished. "Besides that, we can discuss the particulars of what you need. First, do you people sleep?"

Rufus Grinchy stayed silent for a moment, as if pondering how to best answer the question. Then, with truly praiseworthy clarity, it sent an idea to her; the _idea_ of Dementors' sleep. It was not entirely accurate to call it sleep, as they did not lay down for it, and could snap out of it at any moment, but Dementors, every few days, would become dormant, in a state of deep meditation and lethargy.

From what she had learned from Professor Max, Hermione understood that, as they had little in the way of physical muscles to be rested, Dementors' sleep was down to just the mental shutdown necessary to maintain order in one's memories and not go mad.

A mad Dementor, there was a dismal thought.

At any rate, this meant the Dementors would need personal quarters, but not necessarily ones that would conventionally be called bedrooms. Indeed, the tidy sort of bedrooms that Hogwarts's devoted Elves usually fixed up would never do for the cantankerous cadavers, who famously liked their homes dark, moldy and damp.

Now, then, what place in Hogwarts was dark, moldy and damp?

* * *

 _Dear Professor Lupin,_

 _I was glad to hear (from the 'Other Paper') that your anti-lycanthropy campaign has gone so well with the Americans. It seems M.A.C.U.S.A. has come a long way since Grindelwald's War… At this point, they might have become_ _more_ _progressive than our good old Ministry, can you believe?_

 _I am sure that by now, owing to your status as a Knight of the Phoenix, Dumbledore has informed you of the_ _issue_ _with Azkaban. Come to think of it, if the American papers are anything like the 'Prophet', you must have read all about it in today's headlines. Don't worry, we've got the situation more or less under control. I mean, the Fiendfyre is still raging, and we haven't caught the Death Eaters, and the Dementors still need a new home… but you know._

 _As you know, I had my doubts earlier this year, but Grindelwald is actually a pretty good Defence Professor. He's not_ _you_ _, of course, and not having a real wand limits his ability somewhat, but he hasn't killed anyone yet, is what I mean, and he actually is teaching us useful material. I'm debating whether he even counts as an Ilpoat. …Well, probably. Speaking of which! Professor Max, whom you'll remember as your immediate predecessor, survived the fire and has come back to Hogwarts. (He's still… unusual, if you're wondering, but not notably_ _moreso_ _than before he decided to go gallivanting off to Azkaban for a year, so there's that.)_

 _You will find enclosed a letter addressed to the Great Basilisk. Don't try to read it, it's in Parseltongue. (I really should teach you the basics of Parsescript sometime… so much to do, so little time.)_

 _You friend and student,_

 _Lady Macbrains_

* * *

{ _Standing as a letter that a Great Basilisk could happen to read, though She is clearly not its intended recipient;_

 _Greetings!_

 _I apologize for not getting in touch sooner. I know it must be hard for you being away from all Parselmouths, but at least, I hope you have taken the opportunity to acquaint yourself with some American snakes. It's a pity that few Portkeys aren't powerful enough to transport you, or you could spend all time but the Full Moon here with us…_

 _Much has happened in your absence. For instance, I died. And came back. Long story. I was briefly a snake in-between, although not quite a real one. It's a lot of fun, I must admit! While I am on the matter of transformations, I am now both purple, and officially a violin. This is also a long story._

 _We have also successfully captured a few more stray bits of Sir Tom, one of which appears to have bonded to the Sorting Hat. I don't think he minds. The Hat, that is. Sir Tom is another matter entirely._

 _The Sorting Hat has also figured out a way to free you from that meddlesome bonds that prevents the writer of this letter from identifying themselves fully when we are talking to one another, and to discuss certain precautions of the Turban's. It's a simple little ritual that Teacher Dumbledore can perform once you get back to English shores._

 _I am afraid that the Translation Spell I have been developing, to help you communicate with non-Speakers, has suffered some delays. I always have a lot of things to do, as you know. I'm seriously worrying that I'll break my Time-Turner from overuse at the rate I'm going. How is one supposed to be both a Marauder, a world leader, a researcher, an ambassador, a Knight of the Phoenix,_ _and_ _a Hogwarts student? And no, I'm not bragging! It's extremely_ _annoying_ _! And_ _tiresome_ _! I think that I understand Albus better than anyone else, right now._

 _On the other hand, there is another project of mine that I'd like to tell you about. It doesn't concern you_ _directly_ _, but… ah. Here it is. You are the last Basilisk in existence, as you know, and… well, I'm proposing to change that. After all, beyond the sheer fact that it'd be a shame for such a magnificent race as yours to go extinct, you can hardly Petrify all the Werewolves on Earth at once every full moon.(…Well, I_ _could_ _devise a system hinging on a lot of Portkeys and a very big mirror, of course, but that would get messy.) Even now, while you're off in the United States, British lycanthropes and continental ones and so on are again down to just Wolfsbane Potion — if they can even afford it._

 _Naturally, there's much legal legwork to be done before we begin. We can't blunder into this unprepared. Chief Fudge will be easily convinced; he won't like the idea, I think, but he won't dare go against me with the elections coming up. But it's the International Confederation of Wizards that worry me._ _They_ _'re the ones who outlawed the breeding of Basilisks in the first place. Of course, the fact that Teacher Dumbledore is the 'Supreme Mugwump' of the I.C.W. should help, but titles aren't everything, in a democracy._

 _Still, I'm confident that I'll manage it sooner or later; I can have my Malfoy and my Goblins throw in a few sacks of gold if it comes to that. The point is that in a year at most, we will be able to give birth to a new generation of Basilisks, raised towards goodness and enlightenment from hatching — which I think may be a first in the history of Basilisks, come to think of it._

 _But the point is, and I realize that may be a strange concept when Basilisks are only ever born through the ritual, these hatchlings will need a guide, a tutor, a_ _parent_ _— and I fear a human, even a Speaker like myself, just won't do. So… will you be their mother?_

 _You friend,_

 _Hermione J. Granger_

 _P.S.: I'm renting the Chamber of Secrets to a bunch of Dementors until either you come back, or I manage kick an all-powerful fire elemental off their island… whichever comes first. I hope you don't_ mind.}


	56. On the Matter of Hatred

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _So… yes. This. This chapter starts funny enough, but may not stay so till the end, for reasons that will become obvious. Don't worry, though, those black clouds fly away soon enough. …Anyway! Despite this chapter's less-humorous-than-usual nature, I hope you continue to enjoy this story, at least enough to review to tell me your thoughts!_

 _Also, an addendum: those of you who have me on their Author Alert rather than just following the story may have noticed that I have started a second story. I cannot promise that updates on either will be quite as fast as they occasionally could be on "Parselmouth", but rest assured, I'm not going to neglect my first child just because there's a new baby in the house. Either way, I hope at least some of you will cross over, have a look at "The Dalek Invasion of Hogwarts"… and hopefully come to enjoy it! Unless you particularly dislike "Doctor Who" or crossovers in general, I see little reason why someone who liked "Parselmouth" would dislike "Invasion"._

 _And now, today's feature!_

 **Chapter LIII: _On the Matter of Hatred_**

Hermione Jean Granger considered herself an even-tempered girl. A valuable lesson a long-dead, old, nameless adder had taught her in her early youth was that there was little use getting angry at things or making solemn vows to hate them. The world was a big, nonsensical hodgepodge; best to make sure you have a peaceful den to rest in every now and them, and not worry about the rest of it. You'd survive if you were able, and otherwise, that was just the way things were.

{ _Strong emotions,_ } he often repeated, { _is what hot-blooded preys do._ }

{ _I_ _am hot-blooded, old sage,_ } Hermione would invariably remind the forgetful old thing; to which he replied:

{ _But, Speaker, are you prey?_ }

It was a lesson which had stuck with Hermione through the years — alongside the wise elder's advice to take the lazy way out whenever you could afford it, though, of course, that one had sort of drifted away in practice, as it was most incompatible with her drive to help everyone _else_ reach happiness.

Yet there were inevitably a few things in life that Hermione hated.

She hated clothes that were too tight, she hated hot days of which there were mercifully few in Hogwarts, she hated seeing books be damaged or destroyed (particularly if through sheer carelessness).

She hated that saving the world from itself day after day meant ever less free time for her to read or to work on her spellcrafting side-projects or enjoy the company of her friends and family. She hated that she had to travel to Azkaban some time soon to defeat a fire-monster created by a crazy terrorist.

And she hated Puffskeins.

No, more precisely, she hated having to transport large quantities of Puffskeins.

After just one night settling down in the Chamber of Secrets, the surviving Dementors had started causing a ruckus, demanding to be fed. Hermione had halfway-hoped that it would take at least a week before they needed nourishment, but alack, twas not to be. Instead, much like the living humans they had most likely been mutated from in eons past, the Dementors required moderate amounts of feeding almost every day. Hermione thought Professor Max really should have mentioned this to her, but the creepy old hermit had sunk back into the inscrutable depths of Hogwarts the moment he'd departed the meeting room, and he had not been heard from since. One assumed that he might, possibly, resurface some time in the next fifty years.

Left to her own devices, and torn between unwillingness to subject a sentient creature to Dementor exposure, and the fact that a worm simply would _not_ do for the Dementors, Hermione had been forced to figure out a solution.

And that solution, blast it all, was Puffskeins.

Puffskeins were ludicrously cute wizarding pets whom she was pretty sure had been enchanted to be unable to feel pain or sorrow. So cheerful was a Puffskein in its natural state that so much as caressing it would make it reach such heights of ecstasy that it _vibrated_ in its bliss, emitting a soothing humming sound in the process.

Some part of her was aware that rounding up all of the sugary furballs in Diagon Alley, dosing them with Cheering Charms (to be safe), and dumping them into Professor Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets to be fed on by demonic abominations of despair… might not look good for her.

However, this feeling was largely overshadowed by the sheer _annoyance_ of having to transport several hundred Puffskeins back to Hogwarts on her own. For inscrutable reasons, the _Magical Menagerie_ didn't do home deliveries when the number of items purchased exceeded 30, and Hermione wondered if they would stick to this preposterous policy if she were to purchase an ant farm from them, but the point was… the point was she had had to cast an-already worrisome number of Sticking Charms to weld the 78 cages to each other, and then an _exhausting_ Levitation Charm to carry the squealing mass behind her.

At least she hadn't had to sacrifice her own funds for this — thank Merlin for small mercies, even if they must take the form of a reluctant Lucius Malfoy.

Some people stared as she stomped her way through the Alley and back to Knockturn, though she wasn't sure if it was because of her bizarre cargo, or because they had recognized her, or because her skin was purple, or because her hair was so big. It was probably a bit of all four.

To his credit as a Slytherin alumnus, Mr Borgin only stared for a _second_ when she and the Dementor-food entered his shop; then he forced an oily, slightly sneer-like smile, clasped his hands together, and welcomed her.

"Aah! Miss Granger!" he said. "Back so soon? And with quite the… acquisition."

"It's not for pleasure, believe me," she groaned. "Oh, out of my way. I've got to get back to Hogwarts, there are Dementors waiting."

"…D-Dementors," Borgin repeated with dismay.

" _Yes,_ " she repeated. "The Dementors of Azkaban. What's left of them, anyway. They're renting a room at Hogwarts. Don't you read the _Other Paper_? A special edition came out this morning telling all about it."

From his shiftier-than-usual expression, it was clear that Charles Borgin did not, in fact, read the _Other Paper_ at all.

" _I see how it is_ ," Hermione chastised. " _Well_ , Mr Borgin, if we are to continue friendly trading relations, I would have you getting your news from proper, _reliable_ sources, am I making myself quite clear?"

"Yes, ma'm, yes, of course," Borgin said quickly, bowing his head. "…Oh, I meant to tell you! I've found a couple of artifacts you may want to take a look at."

"Ah, fantastic," she answered, with little emotion. "Let me just…"

With a tiring wanded maneuver, she sent the mass of Puffskeins through the Vanishing Cabinet, ahead of her. She took out a notepad and self-inking quill from her pocket and scribbled a note to Professor Dumbledore, telling him to go ahead and feed the lot to the Dementors.

"…there. Now, you were saying?"

"Come," he beckoned her to a back room of the shop. "Yes, go ahead. Here."

The sleazy old wizard directed her to an old, dusty ebony desk. Its legs were entwined with carved snakes, and it had a drawer with a silver lock. All in all it did look like something that might once have been the desk of Professor Salazar Slytherin, Hogwarts Founder.

"Alright," she said. "Thank you. Where did you find it?"

"I make a policy," Borgin said proudly, "not to reveal my methods to my customers."

"By which you mean that you had it stolen," Hermione translated, rolling her eyes.

"…I… I didn't say anything," the shopkeeper grumbled, looking away. "You've got nothing."

"Oh calm down, I'm not a Hit-Witch, am I?" she told him. "Just tell me, is the person you stole it from a well-to-do pureblood bigot?"

"…Are you acquainted with Mr Parkinson?" Borgin whispered.

"Ah, good," she said. "There go all my moral qualms. Hm. So, how much?"

"Would… 99 Galleons be acceptable?" he asked with false timidity.

"Here are 80 Galleons 3 Sickles," she said, emptying all that was left from Mr Malfoy's generous donation from her moneybag onto the desk.

"…Very well," Borgin accepted, though reluctantly.

"Now…" Hermione leaned in close to the desk's locked drawer. { _Open!_ }

The lock shimmered but didn't open.

{ _I, Slytherin, command you to open!_ }

Again the lock reacted slightly, but didn't obey.

"Let's try a password, then," Hermione thought, frowning. { _Basilisk?_ }

No.

{ _Purity? Pure-blood? Death to the Muggle filth?_ }

No.

{ _Scarf? My friend Godric? My awesome mustache? I am the Greatest of the Hogwarts Four? Worship me?_ }

No. No. No! Dammit!

{ _You—!_ } she practically shouted. { _You will reveal your secrets to me! Now!_ }

Suddenly the drawer sprung out of the desk, revealing…

* * *

"…My, that is a lot of emeralds."

"I know, Minerva," she replied to her portrait friend. "But they're all mine now. It looks like Salazar Slytherin collected them. Or maybe he _made_ them; he might well have been an amateur alchemist, even if it was Gryffindor who taught the class at the time."

"I understand, Hermione," the painted witch, "but no one is forcing you to wear all of them at once, on a… necklace."

"No, but I like it," she answered. "I think it contrasts well with the purple skin, you know? And that way, when people notice my necklace, they'll have something else to notice sooner than the Time-Turner. Everybody wins!"

"Except good taste in jewelry," the defeated Minerva said with a helpless shrug.

* * *

Hermione enjoyed a Tuesday afternoon and a whole Wednesday of regular schoolgirl activities — attending class, doing homework, having fun with her friends, making sure the nation's leader didn't accidentally outlaw dustbins because he'd misread a file. Ordinary, calming stuff.

But she couldn't quite enjoy any of it.

For one thing, there was the growing sentiment of fear, of paranoia, which was stretching over the school in spite of a particularly uplifting speech by Dumbledore, and both the _Other Paper_ and the _Daily Prophet_ 's reassurances that the Azkaban escapees weren't actually dangerous. Oh, it was true that they might, possibly, eventually find their way back to land; if they were very lucky, more than a half of them might even have survived the trip; but she stood by what she had told Minister Fudge and the Order of the Phoenix. After thirteen years in Azkaban, the Death Eaters were surely useless, wandless ruins. Barty Crouch Junior — or the Red Heir, as the _Prophet_ had dubbed him — remained the one major threat.

But the people of Magical Britain didn't see it that way, and that went double for the youths here at Hogwarts. Even the Slytherins appeared to worry a fair bit, though they did their best to hide it behind unusually-waxy sneers.

One thing she was ever so thankful for was that Harry and Ron didn't buy into it; they, knowing what's what, subscribed to Hermione's view that ragtag convict minions of the Turban were nothing when they had already faced down the real thing. Indeed, the whole of the Junior Marauders stood by Lady Macbrains; even Hedwig's hoots sounded more brazen and inspiring when she swooped down over the Gryffindor Table. Luna (and Ash) insisted that the whole story was a fabrication in the first place, which wasn't exactly what Hermione wanted to heart, but at least meant she didn't quake in fear. On the serpentine front, Kaiser and Apophis had little interest in the matter, but Tsh believed her assessment of the situation, though to be fair, he trusted her with most things.

Neville Longbottom, however, was another matter entirely.

Ever since he had learned of the Fall of Azkaban, he had become darker and more sinister in his manners, scarcely talking to anyone. Of course, Neville had always been quiet and withdrawn, but where it had been mere shyness before, now it seems positively _gloomy_. There was a faraway look in his eyes, somewhere between desperation and resolve. In two days, Neville Longbottom had become a living riddle.

Hermione disliked not knowing the answers to riddles.

…And also, Neville was her friend. She should care about him. Ask him why he was feeling down. Yes; that also.

That sealed it for her and, at breakfast on Thursday, she surrendered her spot between Harry and Ron to Ginny, instead going over to sit next to Neville. The sulking boy was dispassionately poking a bowl of oatmeal with his spoon, with no apparent interest in actually consuming any of it.

"…Neville?" she started. "You should eat."

"Hmmh," was all the reply she got.

As to his following the advice — well — instead, he dropped the spoon altogether.

" _Neville,_ " she said more strongly, shifting so as to try and lock eyes with him. "I don't quite know what's bothering you, but it's not right, having you torturing yourself like that."

"…You noticed," he answered in a weary voice, looking up just a little bit.

"Of _course_ I — _we_ — noticed," Hermione replied with a warm smile. "Neville, we're your _friends_ , and we're _Gryffindors_. That's two reasons to look out for you. Really, how on Earth could all of us miss your going all… Snape."

Hermione had expected Neville to bristle at the comparison to his most-loathed teacher — for though he was _warier_ of Professor Max, Professor Snape remained on top on the list of professors who Neville despised. The Neville she knew would have fought back, however weakly; possibly crack a joke, if he was in a good mood. Instead, Gloomy Neville remained impassive, his face blank.

"What's going on?" she asked with rising concern. "Neville, you can't just… zone out like that. Whatever's troubling you, you have to tell me. Us. We can _help_. If it's Snape — no, it can't be Snape, you'd have reacted. Is it your family? Has your Uncle Algernon done anything demented again, or—"

"It's nothing to do with _him_ ," Neville said with annoyed amusement, and Hermione cheered inside that she'd finally gotten a _reaction_ out of him. "If you want to know, he's busy trying to figure out how to cast an Undetectable Expansion Charm on the inside of his stomach. Gran's been teasing him about how fat he's getting, see?"

"Hoh! Alright then," she said, sharing an amused smile with Neville before returning to business, "so just _what_ has gotten into you this week? I… I hope it's nothing to do with me. I know I'm a bit… bossy and standoffish sometimes, and, I mean, I think that should only be expected when I'm actually running this country and all, but I understand that it drives a wedge between me and my friends, and you're one of my friends, and if I've done anything to upset you lately then I'm very, very sorry, and — oh God, I'm blabbering, I'm actually blabbering, aren't I?"

"… _Yyes_ ," Neville confirmed, a hint of amusement apparent on his pudgy face. "You… haven't done that in a while."

"I do make an effort," she said with an awkward smile. "But my voice still runs ahead of me when I get too… emotional about things. You're fortunate I didn't accidentally slip into Parseltongue in the middle of that, too. Er…"

"Well, anyway, it's not you, either," Neville reassured her, though at the price of his gloomy look returning. "It's because of the breakout."

"Ah," said Hermione. "I was… kind of… _dreading_ it would be. Look, Neville, I know the Death Eaters were once fearsome, but trust me on this: we won't win anything by getting scared of a band of aging ruffians on a boat in the North Sea who don't even have wands. They—"

"I _know_ ," Neville interrupted her, moodily. "I read the _Paper_ too, Merlin's pants. It's not the Death Eaters in general. It's… it's the Lestranges."

"Who…?" Hermione began, her mind jumping back to the history books. "Rodolphus, Rabastan and Bellatrix? _Those_ Lestranges?"

Neville gave a nod.

"…Why them in particular?" she asked. "I mean, they did sound nasty, but so did that Dolohov character, and I wouldn't trust Jugson as far as I could throw him… and…"

"Hermione…" explained Neville, biting his lips. "The Lestranges… it's personal. For me. I _hate_ the sorry lot of them, I'm sure they must hate me back too. You know I… live with my Gran, right? My grandmother Augusta."

"Yes," Hermione said, stifling her laughter at the memory of how often Neville griped about 'Gran' this and 'Gran' that. "You've mentioned."

"Well, my parents…"

"Frank and Alice Longbottom," Hermione recited from her books. "Heroes of the Wizarding War. Aurors. Knights of the Phoenix. They… died, didn't they?"

" _No,_ " Neville corrected with a haunted look.

And he explained.

His parents were alive… after a fashion. After her Dark Lord's death, Bellatrix Lestrange had become obsessed with the idea that the two Aurors, who had, on three occasions, faced Voldemort and escaped with their lives, knew something about 'where he had gone', and how he had been vanquished. The crazed woman had enlisted the help of her husband and brother-in-law, and together they had raided the Longbottoms' own house in the middle of the night.

There was one dark curse Bellatrix was known for, a curse she seemed to positively _revel_ in, for all that it was some of the darkest filth every devised by a witch or warlock. The Torture Curse. Connecting directly with the victim's soul, the Cruciatus Curse would replace all other sensation with pure, maximal, distilled _pain_ , for as long as the curse was held.

In their desperation to get answers out of the poor couple, Bellatrix and her grisly assistants had held the Longbottoms under the curse for at least eight hours until other Aurors finally arrived to their rescue.

By the time they were taken to Saint-Mungo's Hospital, the sanity of the Longbottoms had long been burned away. They still lived, but barely even recognized Neville; and he knew that someday, when he grew too tall and too mature, they wouldn't know him at all, and stammer pleas for their little boy to be brought back to them.

And so Neville Longbottom hated the Lestranges.

"Neville…" Hermione said by the end of it. "There are no words for how horrible this all is… I truly wish I could do something, but I'm not sure even I can make any promises."

"You're sounding like a Healer," he joked.

" _However_ …" she continued. "…and I'm sorry to go all Albus Dumbledore on you, but _however_ … hatred, it's a dangerous path to take. By all means, stop those monsters, and you have my permission to kick them where it hurts when you do. But revenge — hatred — hatred, Neville, is what was driving the Death Eaters in the first place. Hatred of Muggles, hatred of Dumbledore, hatred of mankind in general as far as Voldemort himself was concerned. Once you start hating — hating someone on general principle, rather than wanting justice for a particular thing they did — well, sometimes you can never stop. And it destroys you. Regardless of morals, was what the Lestranges did to your parent a _productive_ use of their time? No, of course not, but they hated them too much to stop. So your parents… went mad, and the Lestranges were sent to Azkaban, and everybody lost."

Visibly holding back tears, Neville held her hand.

"Thank you, Hermione… th-thank you…"

"As for practicalities," she added, "I'll help you arrest Bellatrix yourself, if you must. _And_ if we can find a good, odds-not-in-favor-of-our-death opportunity."

"You think… you think I could?…"

"Neville, Neville, Neville," she laughed. "You're a much better wizard than your idiot great-uncle and sadistic Potions Master have tried to tell you, believe me. And I know you didn't get such good grades on the whole, but, and I can't believe you haven't figure it out by now, most of that was down to your ill-matched wand. Haven't you noticed you're getting a lot more E's and even O's ever since our little forest outing?"

"Huh," he said, his eyes widening in shock. "You're… you're right. I though — I thought those were all flukes—"

"Don't be silly! You're at least as good a wizard as Harry, Ron and I. And if I'm going to hunt down a Fiendfyre that laid waste to half the Dementor population of Earth… then you can certainly handle a murderous psycho, with a bit of help."

"That's… wow," Neville breathed in wonder. "…Wait. Wait. Fiendfyre Dementor who what?!"

"Oh yes, there's incarnate Fiendfyre on Azkaban Island," she repeated, matter-of-factly. "I really don't want Hogwarts to be stuck with the Dementors forever, so I've been reading up on Fiendfyre and ways to control it, and I'm off to Azkaban this week-end to sort things out."

" _Alone?_ " Neville practically shouted.

" _Yes,_ " she began, "al—"

"No you're not," a familiar voice interrupted.

Turning away from Neville, Hermione found herself face-to-face with Ron Weasley, flanked by Harry and Ginny.

"Sorry to eavesdrop," Ron said, "but we heard what you said to Neville, and I think you need to hear it too. _We're you friends_. When you haven't slept enough or you've eaten too much or you haven't completed homework long enough in advance by your crazy standards, we notice. When you're upset, _we notice_. And it's frankly obvious you're scared of that task, really scared. If you weren't, I'm pretty sure you'd just have sprouted an illegal portkey out of your ear or something by now and finished off that fiend-thing; but no, you keep putting it off. You're _scared_ , Hermione, and if you haven't noticed, then… you need to look in a mirror."

"Ron… Harry… you lot…" she said, at a loss for word. "I… don't know what to say… but, oh, I've _got_ to go, what kind of Gryffindor am I if I put it off forever until someone else fixes it for me just because I'm _scared_?"

"Er, Hermione," Harry said with a smile, "we said we wouldn't let you go _alone_. We set nothing about not going."

"Unless you've forgotten," Ginny added, " _we_ 're Gryffindors _too_."


	57. Fighting Fire With…

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _And we're off to Azkaban for a sauntering picnic! Wait… Anyway, thanks again to all who continue to support this story, be it through Favoriting it, Following it, Reviewing it, or just plain reading it. (Yes, I know you're out there, lurkers who don't even have a ffnet account. Yes, you!) Please continue. Also, a brief reminder to those this would confuse: since Lord Voldemort didn't come back for good in this story, Dumbledore never yet had cause to "update" the membership of the Order of the Phoenix, though he will in time. This means Shacklebolt isn't yet a member, and Hermione thus has no idea who he is. There. Moving on…_

 **Chapter LIV: _Fighting Fire With…_**

Hermione had read of Azkaban. Once the fortress of the vilest Dark Wizard to ever live, the bleak castle lay atop a black rock, surrounded by thick gray fog and the raging, inky waters of the North Sea's least inviting section.

As she neared the island, she was forced to admit that the books had been entirely wrong about that. Or at least, they had to be out of date.

…By a few days, admittedly.

But the contrast was striking between the gloomy gaol of dimly-lit doom she had been expecting, and a blazing red sun sinking into the shining sea.

"Bloody hell…" said Ron.

Hermione, never too keen on flying her own broom, had strapped herself behind Ron on his sturdy old broom, and they had flown together from the point on the coast where her Fudge-obtained Portkey had gotten them, with Harry and Ginny leading the way.

For most of the flight, the four friends had reviewed the plan. They'd taken all of Saturday going over it, all save for their shared Occlumency lesson with Dumbledore — during which hiding their planned weekend outing had been an added incentive to work very hard. (Either their few lessons so far had paid off, or Dumbledore, upon seeing their plan, had seen nothing wrong with it, for he didn't say anything.) But you couldn't risk being too careful when you were dealing with an immortal firegod.

But the closer they came, the more speechless they became. Even her.

The Fiendfyre was, to put it mildly, awe-inspiring.

From a distance it was like a crashed star that had engulfed the island. Closer, and it was a raging inferno covering every inch of ground. Get close enough, and you could see the _shapes_ , the crawling, writhing, galloping _shapes_ within the flames, a thousand different flickers of cursed life, erst boar or eagle or lion, maws of dragons whose tongues shot out, slithered like snakes, took flight like big smoke-spewing bats only to land back down as lizards, who rose on hind legs, and, for a moment, were men, who melted back into formless flames… it was mesmerizing.

And terrifying.

"Bloody hell indeed," Hermione replied to Ron, already short of breath.

The four students may have benefited from especially-modified Weasley jumpers, exuding tiny bits of frost and ice the closer they got to strong sources of heat; but this sort of makeshift system could only go so far, unless you stretched the jumper over your entire body, face included — and the broom-drivers among them, at least, couldn't have afforded that luxury if they'd wanted to. And Hermione had been rather peeved to realize that her other 'brilliant' idea (teaching everyone the Bubble-Head Charm) was useless because Fiendfyre didn't actually release any smoke.

As they swooped closer to the burning isle, however, Harry suddenly shouted.

" _BROOMS!_ "

Slowing down, Ginny, Ron and Hermione exchanges puzzled looks before Hermione stated the obvious:

"We are riding brooms, yes. I think we all know that. If you—"

" _No!_ " Harry cut her off, distressed. "Non-us! Brooms! _There_!"

Holding down his broomstick with his left hand, the Gryffindor Seeker made wild gestures in the air with his freed right.

This was when his three friends noticed the two dots zooming in their direction, fast coalescing into a pair of broomstick-riding wizards in dark purple robes.

{ _Rats_ ,} Hermione cursed in Parseltongue. "Aurors. Should have known. Why don't they mind their business?!"

"Hermione," Ginny retorted, "handling dangerous dark magic _is_ kind of their business, by most accounts."

"Confirmed," said Harry.

"They may be Aurors, but we're _Gryffindors,_ " she argued. "And also Junior Marauders. And I've come back from the dead once. We're clearly more qualified."

"Yes, that's right," Harry ironized, "we Fourth-Year schoolchildren are clearly more qualified than the trained law enforcement people. Okay."

"Er… mates?" Ron said, fearful. "Joking's all fine and good, but they're… still coming towards us? Shouldn't we… do something?"

"Of course we'll do something, Ronald," Hermione answered with a knowing smile.

"What?"

"We'll do what I always do. We'll _talk_."

* * *

The two men were, indeed, Aurors. The first was a muscular, bald, dark-skinned man with a no-nonsense air about him, called Kingsley Shacklebolt; his companion was an older witch with short blond hair tied in a ponytail, a rather large nose, and large brown eyes, who emphatically introduced herself as Auror Celestina Ophelia Withecombe-Greengrass.

"Alright," led Shacklebolt, "what are you four children doing here?"

"Stopping the Fiendfyre, obviously," Hermione answered.

"Wh—"

"My turn, my turn," Withecombe-Greengrass cut him off. "You, the girl with the hair."

"Yes?" Hermione replied. "And I assume you're referring to me, but my friend Ginevra Weasley is _also_ a girl possessed of hair, you realize."

"Yes, yes, whatever. The question — oh, where did you get these _beautiful_ emeralds?!" the Auror asked, a hungry look in her eyes.

Both Shacklebot and Hermione stared at the blonde witch in utter disbelief.

"…I move that we ignore this ever happened," Shacklebolt stated, calmly.

"Motion seconded," Hermione answered in kind.

"All in favor," Ron, Harry and Ginny completed, in chorus.

"But no, wait," the adult witch insisted. "Auror Shacklebolt. A young girl shouldn't be allowed to handle such a large necklace of emeralds. She might get hurt, or… or…"

Kingsley Shacklebolt did not need to interrupt his hands-wringing partner, simply content to give her a heavy _look_. (Hermione was starting to like him.)

"…or, it might… be cursed? So for her own safety, we…we…" Withecombe-Greengrass continued, quite pitifully.

Auror Shacklebolt kept his glare steady, and his contrite partner's voice broke away into nothingness.

"Right," he concluded. "Miss Granger, Mr Potter, Weasleys — the necklace isn't it, but you _are_ committing a crime, here, I'm sorry to say."

"What, trying to save everyone from evil fire?" Ginny huffed. "That's a crime?"

"It is if you're not an Auror, Miss Weasley" the broom-riding Auror answered, his voice harsh and stern. "For your information he D.M.L.E. has already formed plans to sink Azkaban into the sea, taking the Fiendfyre with it. Withecombe-Greengrass and I are here both to keep an eye on things, _and_ to scout ahead for safe spots to undermine."

"Oh," said Ginny, mollified.

" _So_ ," he continued, "the one thing we professionals _don't_ need is a bunch of teenagers interfering for no good reason and _getting themselves killed on our watch_."

"Alright, Mr Shacklebolt," Hermione stepped in, though only figuratively, of course, as she was still clinging to Ron and his broom (which she was afraid undercut her attempt at a firm, unflinching stance). "First, we're not going to get ourselves killed; you called us by our names earlier, you know who we are. I've come back from the dead once already, Harry is _literally the Boy Who Lived_ , and Ron and Ginny are our trusted friends. I also have a plan."

"Be that as it may—"

" _Second_ ," she continued without letting him finish, "your plan is a stupid plan. You can't just _sink Azkaban_."

"I assure you, we had experts look things over, and—"

"Yes, of course, it's theoretically _possible_ ," Hermione once again cut him off, "what I mean is that it would be a spectacularly wrong move. Unless you've forgotten, Wizarding Britain doesn't actually own Azkaban; the Dementors do."

"What? No! That can't be right," spluttered Withecombe-Greengrass. "They're—"

"—recognized, and rightly so, as an autonomous sapient species by wizarding law. And since, as far as anyone could tell, the first Dementors on Azkaban were either bred or adopted by Ekrizdis, who _built_ the thing _ex nihilo_ , then it should be obvious that they are the rightful heirs to the land."

"…Even if that made any sense," Shacklebolt rumbled, "— which it _doesn't_ —, the monsters are hardly going to get any use out of their 'ancestral home' when it's acting as a snack for Fiendfyre. Out of our way."

" _You're missing the point_ ," Hermione stressed. "The Dementors have to live _somewhere_."

"… _Do_ they, really?" Shacklebolt asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

" _I won't even dignify that with an answer_ ," she seethed. "Look, they aren't very picky about living quarters, so if we can get the Fiendfyre _off_ the island without resorting to these sorts of measures, then they'll go back to live on it as is their prerogative, and everything will be fine. On the other hand, sink their home, and at _best_ they'll be sticking around at Hogwarts for month, and I am _not_ dealing with that, are we clear? Not to mention the worst-case scenario: they see your sinking Azkaban as an act of war, rip the old treaty to shreds, and start destroying random people's souls until we're forced to hunt them down to the last."

"…Hogwarts," Withecombe-Greengrass said. "You did say the Dementors are at _Hogwarts_."

" _Yes!_ " Hermione shouted in answer. "Honestly! Does _no one_ read the _Other Paper_? I'm starting to wonder where all those dividends are coming from in the first place!"

"And am I hallucinating, or did you say something that implied that Hogwarts… is your responsibility?"

"Hm-hm," Hermione nodded primly. "More or less, anyway. …Er, don't you recognize me? Purple, big hair and teeth… I believe Mr Shacklebolt mentioned my last name at some point?"

It was really interesting, to the four Hogwarts student, how Celestina Withecombe-Greengrass's big brown eyes suddenly _widened_ after a few seconds of thinking.

"Yep," Ron confirmed, "you're talking to the one and only Lady Macbrains."

The witch was livid.

"I trust you've read about me?" Hermione asked with a smile that, she had to admit, smacked of unbridled arrogance — but damn if it wasn't fun.

"Not read, not just-just read," the woman stammered. "I - my daughters in Hogwarts. Stories. Madness."

"Ooh!" she answered, "you're the mother of Daphne Greengrass, aren't you? Yes, I do suppose she'd have a few tales to tell, being a Slytherin. Though I'm probably not as horrific as she makes me sound. I'm pretty sure she must have left out all the jokes."

"Oh no," the other woman shook her head, "oh _no_. The jokes were the _scariest_ part."

"Okay, since you're here and mentally disturbed—" Hermione said quickly and more to herself than to her interlocutor, "I might as well get a new perspective on the goings-on of Slytherin… I do have Douglas but I can never be sure whether he's a spy or not… though I suppose that's sort of the fun. Erm. Mrs Withecombe-Greengrass, do you know anything about Lady Helen Monroe?"

" _My daughters know nothing about Helen Monroe_!" the Auror woman answered in an outraged screech. "The Greengrasses do not serve, they do not bow, they do not take sides, they do not, as a matter of fact, state their opinions. My daughters would _never_ get involved with someone like the Monroe girl!"

"Alright, alright," Hermione tried to placate her. "Just asking. …Say, you do realize that standing by Mr Shacklebot's decision of stopping us, as opposed to siding with _us_ , constitutes 'taking side'?"

"Nonsense," she answered, automatically. "I'm a Greengrass only by marriage. I am not bound by—"

"No, no, no need for false pretenses, dear colleague," Shacklebolt interrupted her with a conciliatory smile and a warm voice, "you are within your rights to choose your family's honor over my dubious friendship. Overpower me and let the youth pass, if you must. Oh dear, is your trembling wand straying somewhere in my direction? A threat! Heavens! I surrender!"

Harry, Ron Ginny looked utterly gobsmacked, but when Hermione gestured for them to pass the two stunned Aurors, Harry finally snapped out of it and led Ginny into doing so.

Hermione patted Ron on the back and he too gave a sharp nod and flew ahead.

As they passed Shacklebolt, Hermione leaned to the side and asked in a whisper:

"Alright, why are you helping us now?"

"I'm no Greengrass, miss," he answered with an amused grin. " _I_ can take sides if I want to. And anyone with your kind of gall, I'm willing to let have a shot. Besides, I'll still be keeping an eye on you from afar, just in case. Good luck!"

The three brooms flew out of hearing range of the two Aurors', who remained static in the air, Celestina still not having recovered from her shock and general confusion. Hermione gave a slight chuckle that only Ron heard (and he knew her too well to bother to ask). If all went according to plan, then Kingsley Shacklebolt really, really didn't need to 'keep an eye out' just to spot their progress.

* * *

"Alright," Hermione ordered in a _Sonorus_ -amplified voice. "Spread out!"

Immediately, the three broomsticks split up from their close formation and positioned themselves in the shape of an equilateral triangle, about thirty feet above the raging flames.

"Good. Now, the spell!" she then said.

" _Ignidracos!_ " three young voices cast at once.

The Fire-to-Snake Spell was the first part of her plan. It was a rather complex fire spell which shaped preexisting fire into a snake of black fire, which would then obey the caster. She had first seen references to it when researching _Serpensortia,_ to which it seemed to be a less morally-dodgy alternative. One might think a spell within the reach of Hogwarts Fourth-Years, albeit complex, would fail when opposed to something as powerful and willful as Fiendfyre; but what Hermione had glimpsed was that the Rule of Resemblance of Transfiguration applied, and would counterbalance the Fiendfyre's resistance. Fiendfyre already had a tendency to take the form of a serpent, among many other ephemeral shapes; and it was already within its purpose to obey a caster during a magical battle, for all that this particular Fiendfyre no longer operated on anyone's orders. Thus, _Ignidracos_ wouldn't so much change its fundamental nature as force it into one specific form that it might already have taken of its own free will.

It wasn't _that_ easy, of course; the four friends had to hold it with a lot of strength, a lot of willpower, and for quite a long time; but after several minutes of imposing their magical will onto the mass of fire, it shrunk and shifted and crumpled into a single, pulsating snake of black fire coiled around the ruins of Azkaban.

The snake of Fiendfyre writhed and wriggled, and a hint of antlers, the barest suggestion of fangs, a stump of a wing broke away from various parts of its body; but the magic held and all shrunk back into the solid mass of the serpent.

{ _ **WHAT** — **HAVE** — **YOU** — **DONE**?!_} it roared in Parseltongue, lashing out at the air with a large red tongue of flames. { _ **BURN! CONSUME! BE FREE!** — **YAARGHH**!_}

{ _Silence!_ } Harry, Hermione and Ron ordered in chorus. { _You are ours now._ }

{ _ **BURN! CONSUME! FIRE! GRRRH!**_ } the Fire-Snake thundered.

{ _Not the best conversation, are you,_ } Hermione commented. "Alright, men! Order it to shake the tip of its tail like a rattle!"

She and her three friends concentrated on ordering the Fire-Snake to act in that particular way. Between their Occlumency training and their testing the Fire-to-Snake spell on regular fire the day before, it was hard, but far from insurmountable. Soon the monster showed indubitable proof that it was under their control, balancing its vast tail from left to right.

"Okay…" Hermione muttered. "It's docile. Now order him not to burn us, not ever. Make him. Make it a part of him, forever."

{ _Fire-Snake! You will never harm us! Obey!_ } the three who knew Parseltongue chorused, and Ginny echoed this in her thoughts. { _You are our plaything, our servant, and you will not burn us, ever! We are not fuel, we can never be burnt, we are as water! Understand, and obey!_ }

The four held their spell for a moment, panting. Finally, Harry gulped, and said:

"Alright… time for testing…"

The Gryffindor's three friends really wanted to say 'you don't have to do it,' but they knew _someone_ must do it, and it was in Harry's nature to volunteer himself over his friends, for the very same reason that they were now feeling. Thus they said nothing as the Boy Who Lived dove down on his Firebolt _into_ the Fire-Snake… only to come out, unharmed and his clothes not even slightly singed, though also gasping for air.

"It works!" Harry announced once he'd regained their level, panting and clutching his forehead. "It really, really… it's safe. I wouldn't want to do that again, but… I'm okay."

"Just as expected," nodded Hermione.

"…Well…" said Ginny.

"…shall we…?" Ron continued with an eager look.

"Oh, _yes,_ " Hermione confirmed with an enthusiastic nod. "Marauders… take our your straws."

* * *

 **Teriarch Technique (The** ): _Also_ **Fire-Swallowing**. _Magical technique whereby a mage may 'drink' a well of magical fire under their control, holding it within their bodies as a familiar they can then call upon as needed, for any length of time. The Teriarch Technique requires perfect control of the fire to begin with, but is not a complex spell in itself._

 _—_ Adalbert Waffling's _Dictionary of Obscure Spells_


	58. Winter Cheer

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _…Ahem! So this one took a while… blame it on time-taking holiday trips and visits to friends and things. Whatever may have delayed it though, here it is. About time the Granger parents received a bit of character development, I think… I never did like their portrayal, in canon or fanfiction, as just Nice Supporting Parents with basically no character. Realistic, perhaps, but plain damn boring. So let's fix that! _

_Also, for anyone following that other story… I can make no promises as to its next update. For inexplicable reasons, I've been stuck with the worst writer's block in my life right in the middle of the chapter, and it won't let go. I'm confident it'll see the light of day eventually, however. …All I have left to do now is to thank all of you for your continued support, ask for your reviews… and leave you with your promised chapter! Get ready for some Christmas cheer! Right in the middle of August! _

_(Yay.)_

* * *

 **Chapter LV: _Winter Cheer_**

* * *

 _AZKABAN MIRACULOUSLY RECOVERED_

 _Fiendfyre Vanishes Overnight In Freak Occurrence!_

 _Are Humble Ministry Workers Involved?_

 _—_ **The DAILY PROPHET**

* * *

 _DEMENTOR HOME SALVAGED_

 _The Heroic Actions of Aurors and Hogwarts Students Save the Day_

 _Is The Other Involved?_

 _—_ **The OTHER PAPER**

* * *

 _WHY UNICORNS ARE PURE EVIL_

 _An Ancient Equestrian Conspiracy Unraveled_

 _Also, on Page 2: Something Happened in Azkaban, Apparently_

 _—_ **The QUIBBLER**

* * *

"Well, my friends," Hermione announced once they were all back to the safety of Gryffindor Tower, rather late on Sunday evening, "as the Fiendfyre is contained and none of us are missing any limbs, I think we can safely call this mission a success."

"Hurrah!" the other three chorused.

"…Sorry, _what_ are you talking about?" Seamus Finnegan asked, looking up from a bottle of sloshing blue liquid he had been busy spelling.

"Yes, I'd quite like to know too," Maximilian weighed in from the other side of the room. "You said I couldn't come with you, but you never explained quite…"

"Well," Hermione cut him off before he got too far in, " _that_ had to do with your _condition_ , which I thought might… react poorly to the climate in Azkaban and the… sort of acrobatics we were going to perform."

A very roundabout way of saying that she had no idea whether the Teriarch Technique would have worked for a not-quite-human like Maximilian, and hadn't wanted to risk it.

"Ah, thank you," the Boggart replied with a meek nod. "Forget I asked."

"As for what we were talking about, Seamus," she went on to explain, "simply put, Ron, Harry, Ginny and I spent this afternoon drinking up a lot of Fiendfyre through a straw to give Rufus's crew back their home."

"Rufus is the Chief Dementor or whatever," Ron supplied. "For context."

"How _did_ we absorb all that, by the way?" Ginny asked, curious. "There was enough of it to cover an _island_."

"Magic," Hermione answered with a smug grin. Feeling the dagger-like stares of the other Gryffindors on her, she quickly added: "Or, more precisely, I put Undetectable Space-Expansion Charms on those sausages you all gobbled down this morning."

Strange, how they all looked a bit sick suddenly.

* * *

Rufus and his Dementors were overjoyed — for a given value of 'overjoyed' that could only apply to Dementorkind — at Hermione's announcement that they could go back home. Though this was admittedly marred by the continuing absence of their prisoners and food stock, they did not worry overmuch, as Hermione had promised to keep them supplied with Puffskeins. (Neville had looked at her funny for a week after she'd explained _that_ scheme.) In fact, she didn't even have to bother with going to the _Magical Menagerie_ anymore; a deal was worked out with prominent Puffskein breeders Wilfred & Moff to ship crates of them directly to Azkaban, all expenses generously provided by the Ministry of Magic. (Who, off the books, obtained the funds from the boundless generosity of Mr L. M.)

* * *

{ _You know,_ } she mused one evening to Tsh, { _I really ought to buy a share in Wilfred & Moff… booming business._}

{ _I want in,_ } Tsh answered.

* * *

Come late December, Hermione and Tsh's joint Gringotts vault was coming along very nicely; and the _Other Paper_ reported that the Dementors had successfully rebuilt their citadel. Judging by Mr Dobby's pictures, Azkaban Mark Two was actually much prettier by human standards than the dull tower the Crimson Heir (as the _Daily Prophet_ had come to rather daftly call Barty Crouch Jr.). Of course, it was still an ominous castle of obsidian stone drenched in an unquenchable sense of doom; but it was no longer a solid cube; rather, it was an extravagant facsimile of Hogwarts, complete with columns and turrets and galleries and even their very own Whomping Willow (Merlin only knew where they'd found the thing). In other news, Grindelwald's lessons continued to raise the students' dueling, hers included, give or take a few more visions of phantom furniture. All in all, things were going well.

Still, Harry's headaches hadn't stopped since the Azkaban expedition, and as a result, he had more or less taken over the 'brooding gloom' gig from the mollified Neville Longbottom. But even that wasn't too concerning, however, as not only was Hedwig doing her best to cheer him up, but Harry was planing to spend the Christmas holidays at the Burrow with Ron and Ginny, which she knew would do him a world of good.

Hermione herself, for her part, would be going home. She and Tsh both yearned to see their parents again.

* * *

"Hermione! You're back!" Doctor Sally Granger said as her daughter appeared in their fireplace.

"And purple," the girl's father, Daniel Granger, added. "It's an interesting contrast, with the… green fire."

"I never could get quite used to that," his wife commented with an exaggerated shiver.

"I actually quite like it," said Mr Granger. "But then, you know green _is_ my favorite color, dear."

"As purple is mine," Mrs Granger finished with a warm smile towards her daughter. "Oh, Hermione, look at you. What happened?"

Hermione kissed her mother on the cheek and then gave her a shy, embarrassed sort of smile.

"What happened?…" she answered. "Ah, well, that… that is rather a hard question. …Didn't I write you about…?"

"I suppose you must have, Hermy," said her father — she shot him a _look_ , and he corrected: " _Hermione_ … I suppose you must, but… your letters have been growing steadily shorter and shorter with every passing week…"

"They would have to," Hermione said guiltily. "I have more people to write _to_ with every passing week, and only so much time to write it in, even with my time machine… and you understand, I love you, I really, really do—"

"We'd never doubt that, Hermione darling," said Mrs Granger.

"—only, it's not the end of the world if I forget to write to you, or, or if I'm a bit laconic there — it only means I have more to explain to you at Christmas."

"Whereas if you forget to write to your Mr Fudge character…" Daniel began.

"— _literally_ the end of the world, yes."

The Granger spouses shared a very pained, very, very tired look.

"…So let's go for a bit of a recap, hm?" Hermione suggested. "Come, let's go to the living room."

* * *

"A giant spider?"

* * *

"…A _Nazi_? A real, honest-to-god —"

* * *

" _Necromancy_?! Real, _actual_ necromancy?!… With zombies and everything?"

"Calm down, mum. The zombie didn't kill me."

"…Well, that's plain enough, but—"

"The cursed soul-shard jewelry did."

* * *

"A fear elementals ripped out your soul? Is _that_ what you are saying?"

"Mum, it's not like that…"

"You kissed a boy on the lips in public? Is _that_ what you are _saying?!_ "

" _Dad_ , it's _not_ like _that!"_

* * *

"One of your schoolmates… wants to break the man who engineered World War II out of prison. …Hermione darling, your world is _scary_ "

"Yes. Yes it is. Moving on?"

* * *

"Dragons _?!_ "

* * *

" _A mass prison break-out?_!"

* * *

" _HELLFIRE?!"_

* * *

"…aaand… there we are!" she concluded. "It took an hour or two to explain to Minister Fudge that just because a man has horns on his heads from an unfortunate Charms experiment doesn't mean he shouldn't be classified as nonhuman — _not_ that nonhumans should be treated any differently from wizards… you get the picture… and then I borrowed his Floo and here I am. Nice of you to have the house hooked up to the network, by the way. Very nice surprise. I didn't even know Muggles were allowed to do that."

"Oh, neither did that man from the Department of Magical Transport," her mother answered with a rather satisfied look on her face. "In fact, I don't think any witch or wizard ever considered the idea. Hence, no rules against it."

Hermione gave her mother another kiss, then a thought struck her.

"Mum, that's _brilliant_! Even more brilliant than I — a Floo network, it's a permanent magical effect right here in the house! Trace or no Trace, the Ministry will never be able to tell whether I'm doing an odd spell or two on top of — I can do magic whenever I want in this house now! { _Sweet scales!_ }"

"Well, the thought _had_ occurred to me," said Mrs Granger, her smile widening ever so slightly more. "Merry Christmas."

"Oh, thank you ever so much. …And they wonder where I get it from," she chuckled.

"What?"

"The loophole thing."

* * *

"You know," Mr Granger said at dinner, looking up from the rather excellent goose Hermione had cooked (using some charms she'd been dying to try out for _years_ ), "Hermione, I think I really should congratulate you."

"Hm?" Hermione managed, though her mouth was full. (Her thoughts strayed to Ron for a second. She hoped he, Harry and the other Weasleys were all doing alright.)

"For becoming financially self-reliant at such a young age," he explained.

" _Daniel!_ " his wife chastised, though with a wry smile on her lips. "All those death-defying heroics, and the thing you pick out is that she's become _business savvy?_ "

"No, no, he's right," Hermione argued. "From the moment the Hat sorted me — no, from the moment I received my letter, things like that were _obviously_ going to happen. I'm a witch. Therefore, madness and swashbuckling. But do you know just how few mages can even add up figures right? And I mean grown-up ones!"

"I concede," said Sally.

* * *

Hermione spent two days reveling in the joy of using all sorts of charms on most of her possessions. She'd never liked the color of that wall… cooking breakfast was so much easier with cooking spells… and the Softening Charms worked wonders on a rebellious pillow… she could enchant Tsh's books to be lighter so that he could read them more easily…

Best of all, she could finally make some progress on the Babblebook. By the 22nd, it was all but ready for the various foreign dictionaries to be fed to it — a task she would leave to paid scribes with more patience than her.

"So!" Hermione said to her parents on the morning of the 23d, "have you any special plans for Christmas Day?"

Daniel Granger's eyes gleam.

"Oh, Hermione, we thought you'd never ask."

"What? What?" Hermione asked quickly with a curious grin on her face. "Have you — have you invited someone important, or gotten a special gift, or —"

"Not quite," Sally said with a knowing smile. "We're _going_ somewhere."

"Somewhere magical," her husband added.

Hermione's eyebrows shot up.

"You've somehow tricked your way to a Floo connection, and now we're going someplace _magical_ for _Christmas_?" she choked up in amazement. "When did you two start going… going… _wizard_?"

"When you started going 'impossible goddess', dear," Mrs Granger answered with much warmth and a twinge of sadness in her motherly voice, her hand brushing against Hermione's purple, glowing cheek. "I think it was towards the end of last year… when we truly realized you'd started running forwards in your crazy fantasyland, and that it wasn't just the excitement of a child, that this was going to be _your life_."

"We've always known you were special, of course," her father took over, "before you even hissed to your first viper, but it's become clear you're so special even the wizards can hardly believe in your existence. And we saw that if even the wizards who see you all year round were bemused before what you've become… well, how could two poor Muggles who only see their daughter a few months a year possibly keep up, possibly not be… left behind, and forgotten?… And none of us want that, I think. So! Crazy wizards it is…"

"At least in the holidays," said Sally. "I can't imagine what our patients would say if we tried to shove little polished sticks in their mouths."

Hermione really didn't know what to say. She really, really didn't know what to say.

She hoped her eyes were enough.

And the hug, also.

She let herself linger in the joyous moment a short while, then drew back a few steps, and asked, her curiosity getting the best of her:

"So, this magical place, what is it?"

"…the Frost Fair on the River Thames," Daniel dropped.

Hermione stopped breathing for a moment. Then the dam broke:

"Dad, mum, that's, that's, fantastic and wonderful and, and also not possible," she babbled, "I used to read all the time about the London Frost Fair and that's absolutely not possible, the climate has changed too much, the Thames hasn't frozen enough for a Frost Fair since 1814, and also, will there be elephants?"

Her father chuckled.

"Now, now, little witch, _you_ ought to know better," he said. "When has something as mundane as climate stopped the wizards? For the two-hundred years anniversary of the last Frost Fair, a cooperative in Diagon Alley has set out to reconstitute it. That mean sstealing a fair bit of the Thames's surface from Muggles for a few weeks… but you know what, _I_ 'm a Muggle and I think it's worth it. We read all about it in the _Daily Prophet_ just a few weeks ago."

Hermione was left gaping in joy.

"And yes, there will be elephants," her mother added, and Hermione felt downright faint.

* * *

There were, indeed, elephants.

And erumpents.

And albino crocodiles, their backs covered in enticing hieroglyphs in gold ink.

And trained yetis dancing the tango.

And some great sea beast, vaguely reptilian, playing tricks beneath the water, surrounded by smaller, shining fish.

(No dragons, mercifully. Hermione was glad to see the Wizarding World retained a bit of sense.)

Tents and shops of odd colors had erupted on the artificial ice, and it was a whirlwind of colors and tricks. All the beguiling bizarreness and all the liveliness of Diagon Alley, magnified by the Christmas cheer and the unique occasion for which it had been summoned. Famous charmsmasters demonstrated rare tricks and illusions, several wizards whom Hermione recognized for having seen their likenesses in textbooks and on the covers of _Transfiguration Today_ issues had a contest of outlandish Transfigurations. There were food stands of course, selling the best of magical cuisine — sausages leapt into existence, already flavored and heated just right — gingerbread men danced.

All through it all wizards walked and laughed and talked, with their extravagant robes and hats and beards and hairstyles and pets.

Hermione couldn't quite forget, on the edge of her mind, that there were Goblins and Banshees and Elves and snakes who were missing out on all the fun…

…but she didn't make any particular effort to remember it, either, as she and her parents lost themselves in the fun of the instant.

Of the visitors, there were a few she recognized for having seen them in passing in Diagon Alley, and a few more she truly knew. There was Charles Borgin, his smile more genuine than she'd ever seen, enjoying a piece of cake. There went none other than Argus Filch, who watched the yetis dance. Professor Flitwick was downing a pint of ale as he laughed with a a venerable-looking wizard in golden robes. A man went by who she was pretty sure was Dumbledore's brother Aberforth — only pretty sure, because he was wearing a Santa Claus costume and his beard had been charmed pink and green and _glittery_. Several Hogwarts students of all ages and houses ran about and played jokes on one another.

And there went —

"Hello!"

"Young Miss Granger! What a joy!" answered the frail-looking man and his wife. "And I presume those are your parents! Enchanted. Erm, how do you do."

"How… do you do?" said a bemused Daniel Granger as he raised forward a hand to shake, only for the old man to kiss him on the cheek instead. "Are you French, by any chance?"

"And how," Hermione laughed. "Mum, dad, please meet Nicolas Perenelle Flamel."

The dentists looked at the two old people as though they'd seen a pair of ghosts.

" _The_ Nicolas Flamel?!" was all Mrs Granger could blubber.

"Indeed, Madame Granger!" answered the alchemist with a touch of pride. "It is good to see my name is remembered even by the Moldu… even if I owe it to my lack of skill with Obliviations. Heh. Let me say, it has been an honor to know your daughter, you two lucky parents. She has the makings of greatness in her, and, perhaps even more important, a good heart, and brave."

"It is gladly that we have shared much of our Elixir with her whenever she asked," said Perenelle. "There are few persons in the world we would trust more with distributing to worthy causes than Hermione Granger."

"Wait. Hermione," Daniel interjected, "is she saying you've had Elixir of Life at your disposal for… how long?!"

"Eh, I mostly used it for regenerating people's hands," she answered. "Also, I've had Douglas spiking Albus and McGonagall's afternoon tea with it for months. You know, I don't think either of them has noticed yet. I'm sure they'll thank me when they do."

Her mother gave her an odd look.

"Hey, I'm not doing it _just_ because they're my favorite Professors," she said. "That would just be biased and selfish. But the world _needs_ Albus Dumbledore in full shape, especially now with Death Eaters back on the prowl… and I know he'd never accept if you just offered, eh, Master Flamel?"

Flamel shook his head, his beady eyes twinkling in amusement.

"And as for McGonagall, it's _Hogwarts_ that needs her, for the sake of its sanity… especially with, well, _me_ on the prowl."

"Erm, Miss Granger," said Mrs Granger in an exaggerated impression of her consultation-voice, "do you want us to do anything about that swollen ego of yours?…"

"Oh come on," Hermione argued back. "You said as much earlier. More."

"Though I was always the first to preach of the virtues of humility," Flamel added with a warm smile, "I must admit that young Hermione's assessment of her abilities, though formidable, is quite—"

The ancient alchemist's words were left tragically unfinished; with no pomp, no ceremony, no warning, the light in his eyes went out and he fell forwards, lifeless. Hermione barely caught him and found, to her horror, that he was not breathing.

Then they heard it — the entire Frost Fair — a laugh that Hermione, since her expedition to Little Hangleton, had caused to find terribly familiar…

—the manic cackle of the Crimson Heir.


	59. Battle on the Ice

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This chapter to be read to the music of Prokofiev! Or not, whatever you want. Anyway, word of warning, things get momentarily serious in this chapter. Remember that no matter how generally light-hearted this story may be, Death Eaters are still Death Eaters, and Death Eaters are, inescapably, people who will kill other people sometimes. Particularly Barty Crouch Jr. There's nothing too terrible in this chapter, but a battle is a battle and I don't want anyone to be put off. With that in mind… thanks again to all who support this story, please review, and here we go!_

 **Chapter LVI: _Battle on the Ice_**

Theatrical in his triumph, the Crimson Heir emerged from behind a snow-white greasy-pole, and the three inconspicuous wizards and witches who had been climbing it dropped down nimbly, whirling around to reveal the skull masks of the Death Eaters. One was a tall wizard in grey robes, with a long grey beard visible below his mask; the other two were a witch wearing a fur cape over her dark purple robes, with the bony hands of a dejected old crone, and her younger colleague a painfully thin but clearly athletic younger man in green robes.

Bartemius Crouch himself still wore the same scarlet robes from which his recent moniker had been derived, complete with a blood-red metal helmet like a Spanish Conquistador's crowning his dirty, unkempt blond hair. The mad gleam in his eyes was stronger than ever, heightened by the excitement of victory. He strode into full view at an almost leisurely pace, licking his lips in delight, taking in all his prospective victims.

Finally, he spoke.

"Thirteen years, it has been… since the Dark Lord has taught the wizards of Britain a lesson about power, and _fear_. The very type of humankind… humankind at its basest, at its Mugglest. A veritable god stands among you for a quarter of a century, radiating power and wisdom, and kind enough to take any who dares ask under his personal protection as his loyal servants."

Hermione watched around in shock and saw that this was also the reaction of the rest of the attendants. Stunned stares and disbelieving whimpers all around. No one dared move.

"Yet thirteen years are all it takes for you _peons_ to forget your place. You make merry! You make _merry_ while the Dark Lord of all languishes—"

"You-Know-Who is dead!" a boy, a First-Year student at most, probably younger, found the courage to shout.

 _Close enough_ , Hermione thought.

Her mother was holding her hand very tightly.

" _Mum, it's going to be alright!_ " she whispered in what she hoped was a comforting voice.

The truth, however, was that she was… rather scared. Rather scared indeed.

"Dead. The Dark Lord, dead?" said the Crimson Heir. " _No, foolish boy!_ Do you truly believe the drivel your parents have taught you? Let me see, wearing such robes on holiday, you must be of good breeding. What is your name, boy? Are you a pureblood?"

The child stood, defiant, in silence.

"…Red hair, and more bravado than wise," the Dark Wizard observed. "A Weasley then. Yes, it would be."

 _…_ _A Weasley?_ Hermione thought.

But then, why not? Ron and Ginny _had_ mentioned that they had many cousins. She had simply never seen any of them. Now that Crouch mentioned it, there was something in the boy's features that was not unlike the cheekbones of Fred and George, or the nose of Arthur Weasley…

"Well then, little Weasley, I am sorry that you have had to grow with such… misinformed forebears. But you and I, we know the truth, don't we? The Dark Lord is not dead, he cannot be."

Again the madman pause in his speech. He probably liked the dramatic tension this built up. When he spoke again, he gazed up into the cloudy white sky, enraptured, his eyes ablaze.

"The Dark Lord can never die, for he is not of the mortal race! Do you not see? The Dark Lord is everything mankind aspires to be, and more. He is eternal, he is as mountains and stars and moons—"

 _None of these things last forever,_ Hermione's subconscious pointed out, _not even them_.

"—he is not flesh, but pure spirit."

 _He's not much then, is he, considering how thin he has spread said spirit. Not that you'd know that, you overblown minion; he never trusted you enough to tell you about the Horcruxes, did he?_

"Spirit, and a name terrible and great,—"

 _You mean the clever little anagram?_

"and a vision, so beautiful, of an orderly world of magic and might. The Dark Lord is not a man, he is an ideal, boy, and ideals never die, do they?… What do you say, young Weasley? What do you say to that?"

"I say…"

The tension was palpable in the cold air.

"I say… that he _is_ dead," said the Weasley child, decisive. "Harry Potter blew him up."

"…Truly," said Crouch, his eyes darkening in an instant. "Blown up, you say."

"Blown up," Weasley asserted. "I read all about it, in—"

"Then blown up it shall _be_ ," he ruled with as much emotion as if he were swatting a fly.

A barely-glimpsed wand was ever-so-slightly pointed; no word was uttered; no sound was even heard. Yet one moment the crowd of stunned wizards watched a child with red hair standing tall in the face of the Crimson Heir — and the next, a cloud of yellow and red loomed over a charred gap in the ice, and there was no child to be seen.

"You… you _monster_!" an elderly witch yelled in outrage.

"Aaah!" Crouch moaned, almost relieved, as though he had been waiting for this very thing all along. "It's all coming back, isn't it? The _fear._ Hah! Fools! Degenerate wastes of wands and magic, with no will or rationality to your spirits! You made merry when you knew us, His faithful, to have returned to your shores to deal out His justice! _Make merry no more!_ "

"Enough of this!" said Perenelle Flamel, letting go, for the first time throughout Crouch's little speech, of her husband's lifeless hand. "Barty Crouch Junior. Who invited you here?"

There was a measure of admiration in Crouch's eyes as he loomed closer to the short, and so very, very old French woman.

" _I_ did," he answered, outright mocking her, grinning with all his clean white teeth. "Nyeheh. Heh. Heheh. You see, you wizards, you have grown too complacent, too trusting. A neighborhood committee Frost Fair? Oh, good, fantastic, _allons-y_! But who's that committee, hm? Who started it? Who's the head, who sits on the board?"

Still cackling, Crouch gave a bow and then gestured at his comrades to do the same.

" _Un piège !…_ " Perenelle said, the words escaping her in almost a whisper.

"Yes! Yes! A trap!" Crouch clasped his hands together. "A stupid, simple trap that you all, the finest and kindest, flew into the moment the Snitch was out. Now pay the price of your lack of foresight."

"No… no, I don't think so," Perenelle said, breathing calmly. "This was a very cunning trap, M. Crouch, executed perfectly, but you did more today than trap a few Englishmen on the Thames and make a little speech."

"…Did I?" the fiend asked in genuine puzzlement, blinking rapidly.

"You killed my husband," she said simply, though Hermione could now see that she was holding back tears. "You murdered him without a word, without a thought, and for that, I will never, ever, forgive you."

"I'm sorry," the Dark Wizard said in lieu of an answer, addressing the frightened crowd, "did anyone here ask for this crazy woman's forgiveness? 'Cause it certainly wasn't me."

"Oh, but you'll wish it was," muttered Perenelle before _snapping_ the fingers of her left hand.

With a great whooshing sound, Crouch was blasted to the ground, the ruby helmet falling off and clinkering against the ice.

He soon sprang back to his feet, of course, though wobbling slightly.

"How did you even _do_ that?!…," he asked in wonder, fear, denial — a mix of all three. "Y-You're just an _old lady_!…"

"An _old_ lady, yes," she flicked her wand and Barty's leg _bent_ backwards and he once again fell on the ice. "A very old lady. A very, very old lady. I am Perenelle Flamel. I have walked the Earth for six centuries, I have trained with some of the finest sorcerers and magicians, wizards and enchanters who ever lived… and the greatest was my husband, Maître Nicolas Flamel… whom you killed."

"Flamel…" the other repeated in disbelief, even as he waved his wand over his leg in intricate patterns, healing it. "I… I didn't know…"

She glowered and he gazed back; for a moment, the tension held.

He jumped back on his feet.

" _Good!_ " he shouted. "The old man got what he deserved! Only the Dark Lord can live forever! _Crucio!_ "

And the duel was on.

In a stupendous display, the two great sorcerers sparred on the ice, surrounded by the flying sparks of their spells and their curses and their shields. Hermione could not even _begin_ to understand it; she hardly knew, or recognize, any of the spells the two duelists used.

But she understood one thing.

Cupping her hands, she shouted to the populace:

"She's buying us time! _Flee_!"

After one more moment of inertia the crowd dispersed. Quite a few twisted fruitlessly on themselves, blocked by the Anti-Apparition Jinx the Death Eaters had been sure to cast, but without the monstrous red demon's gaze to keep them frozen in fear, nothing stopped them running away on foot.

"Travers! Mulciber! Loriax! _Stop them!_ " Barty found the time and air to shout.

The tall man with the grey hair and beard, so long that his mask could not conceal it — Trevor Travers — was the first one to move. He muttered several Incarcerous Spells in a row, and four wizards and witches fell, but the fifth curse was blocked by the radiant shield of Professor Flitwick.

" _Damn_!"

Engaged in duel by the Charms Master, Travers was powerless to stop the other escapees around him, forced to trade blow for blow with the diminutive expert — not unlike Crouch himself with Perenelle.

Muriel Mulciber, the crone in the violet dress, ran far quicker than Hermione would have given her credit for, physically catching several fleeing wizards by the hair and cursing them at point blank, leaving them dead or injured and moving on to the next. Hermione herself, safe in the knowledge of her firey trump card, and confident in her quick wits and Gryffindor courage, didn't even take one step as the Death Eater made her way towards her, making short work of the few mages who resisted her. Only when she was a a few feet away did Hermione realize, to her horror, that her _mother_ — who most definitely did _not_ possess a Snake of Fiendfyre at her beck and call — was still there, holding her hand, steadfast.

"MUM—" she shrieked, too late —

— brutally, Mulciber grabbed Sally Granger's other wrist —

— and stopped, gasping, to whirl around and find the other Doctor Granger pressing a shining pistol into her thigh.

"Dad?!"

"After we heard about those Dark Wizards," the dentist answered proudly, "I decided to make a few investments."

"Coward! Mudblood _filth!_ " hissed Mulciber. "Not even the courage to use your wand!"

"I don't _have_ one," Doctor Granger said in a measured tone. "But, speaking of wands… drop yours, now, or I shall be forced to shoot you."

Mulciber looked Hermione's father in the eye, and Hermione briefly wondered if she was Legilimizing him — no — it was mere defiance.

" _Do it_ ," the old witch spat. "I _dare_ you, _Muggle_. Shoot."

There was a loud _BANG!_ as Daniel Granger made good on his threat, his bullet penetrating the despicable old woman's stomach. Mulciber gave a sort of gurgling rasp of surprise and collapsed, though not letting go of her wand.

"Run!" Mrs Granger commanded.

Sally and Daniel Granger quickly made their way through the crowd, a forceful Sally dragging Hermione with them.

As they neared the edge of the frozen Thames, Hermione began resisting in earnest:

"No! Mum! Leave me! You two go— I can help here — _I'_ m a witch, and I'm a good one!"

" _You're fifteen!_ "

"And precocious! Besides, the age of majority in the Wizarding World is 17, did you know that? I'm not that far off! … _Depulso!_ "

Her Banishing Charm, which she had been careful not to make _too_ strong, blew her two parents and a few other fleeing Muggles forward a few feet.

"Oh, and dad? That was brilliant!" she shouted in goodbye before turning around, ready to join the battle on the ice behind them.

Taking in the situation as she could, she saw that of the three remaining Death Eaters, only one was currently a threat. Barty Crouch was still dueling the enraged Perenelle Flamel; both of them had clearly taken much summarily-healed damage, their clothes cut and frayed and their hair wild, but this did not stop them moving fast as lightning. Hermione winced as purple curse she couldn't identify hit the Death Eater and produced a fleshy _squelching_ noise as he squeaked in pain. The duel of Flitwick and Travers was going much the same, neither participant relenting.

The last wizard, though — John Jugson, she thought his name was — was unhindered, and he wasn't pulling his punches. Several bodies, whether injured or dead, lay scatted on the ice, which bore several more cracks and holes as well. Though no extraordinary duelist, he was fast enough and ruthless enough to hold his ground against the few mages who had banded to show him opposition — the only one she recognized being Aberforth Dumbledore. Oddly, there were no more civilians escaping; they all seemed to stay more or less static around the perimeter — why? —

" _GRAAAWWWGHRR!_ "

Ah, there was why.

Jugson had Imperiused the three dancing yetis, who, with almost robot-like moves, controlled by his greater intelligence, were surrounding the terrified crowd Jugson was cutting down, snatching any who tried to escape.

But they weren't looking in _her_ direction… There was one at whom she had a clear wandshot…

Now, what did she know of Yetis? Man-eaters in the wild, native to the Himalayas… Weak to fire… _Fiendfyre_? No, no, these were Imperiused creatures, she didn't want to really hurt them if she didn't have to, and besides, one must never reveal one's trump card early, Professor Grindelwald had really stressed this point… The Disarming Charm woud be of no use, and _Petrificus Totalus_ was too risky with its long incantation, the Yeti might hear her and dodge…

Well, what about the old classics?

Again remembering Grindelwald's lessons, she took a firm footing, steeled herself, and cast, careful not to shout:

" _Stupefy!_ "

The red bolt hit the Yeti squarely in the back, but the creature didn't appear to even notice it.

" _Stupefy!_ _Stupefy_ _!_ " she cast over and over.

At five consecutive spells, the Yeti finally wobbled and let go of a teenager he'd snatched and prepared to bite, letting her flee away into the streets of Muggle London.

The abominable snowman turned around, revealing a scrunched, black, ape-like face almost completely hidden by the long white hair.

 _Of course!_ Hermione remembered. _Yeti hair is curse-resistant, it acts as a shield… The face is the weak point!_

"GROWWL!"

"Yes, yes, growl to you too, big snow angel," Hermione answered, regaining her confidence. " _Petrificus Totalus!_ "

The spell missed its mark, hitting the Yeti's furred — protected — neck instead.

"GRAARGH!" roared the beast, advancing towards her.

"Eck! _Stupefy! Ghoulashio! Stupefy!_ "

Her two Stunner and her Spooking Jinx both missed, the latter missing altogether while the first two hit fur to no avail.

 _Wait…_

Struck by inspiration, and just as the Yeti was about to lurch itself at her, she cast yet another curse:

" _Calvorio!_ "

The dark red, zig-zagging, sizzling little curse hit the Yeti's biceps, instantly thinning its white hair. Taken aback, the Imperiused monster stopped in his tracks to stared in confusion athis hairless arm.

" _Calvorio! Calvorio!_ " Hermione continued rapidly until the Yeti's entire upper body was bare.

"GRUH? _GRUUUHWL_!?"

"And now for the killing blow," she muttered with immense satisfaction. " _Stupefy._ "

This time, in one go, the Yeti was successfully Stunned, and fell forwards like a lopped tree trunk…

…revealing Jugson right behind it, looking on angrily.

"Well, well, well, looks like someone's gotten clever," he said in a grating nasal voice. "Potter's mudblood _friend_ … should have known you'd be here, _brat_ … but do you seriously think I'm going to let you live after this?…"

"You wouldn't have anyway," she noted, putting on a brave façade, but the truth was, she really didn't like how this was going.

Out the corner of her eye, she could see, behind Jugson, at his feet, even, the still form of Aberforth.

Another bit of Grindelwald's advice came back to her. _Strike the first blow. Catch them off-guard_.

" _Expelliarmus!_ " she said abruptly. " _Protego!_ "

The Death Eater dodged the spell and fought back in kind; but her Shield Charm held true and the other man's Disarming Charm failed.

" _Stupefy!_ " she cast, and, for no clear reason save that it jumped to her mind, she followed with, " _Calvorio!_ "

The first spell missed, but, against all logic, she got Jugson with the Hair-Vanishing Curse.

The proverbial fat lot of good _that_ did, though — save, perhaps, that it knocked aside the Death Eater's mask, revealing his unkempt, unpleasant features — stubble, angular nose, and sunken, slightly bloodshot eyes.

"Enough games! _Imperio!_ " he snarled.

Hermione managed to block his Imperius Curse, but found it followed by another —

" _Crucio!_ "

—which she blocked—

—and another, even quicker and better-aimed than the last—

" _Imperio!_ "

She dodged and began another Stunner, only to suddenly be rammed into by a boat of pain — what the — she hadn't even _heard_ him cast another Cruciatus — but that thought could hardly be pursued, she couldn't even think of the possibility he had used wordless magic, because the _pain_ — it was horrible, truly horrible, like being flayed alive, or dipped in Basilisk venom —

— then as quickly as it had come, it ended. And through the thumping and buzzing that remained in her ears, she heard the Dark Wizard's voice casting more curses, but she soon realized, for none of them it her, that they weren't aimed _at_ her, and there was another voice shouting other spells —

" _Helen Monroe?!_ "

And it _was_ her, the teenage Dark Lady of Hufflepuff, going toe-to-toe with the Death Eater, or close enough — keeping him busy all on her own, driving him _away_ from her —

She crawled in the opposite direction, and took cover behind a tent. Though still shaking a little, she found the strength to pull herself to her feet.

The Cruciatus Curse. That would be a story to tell… Merlin, what would her parents say?

The answer was that they would panic significantly less if she proved that her staying had, through it all, been _useful_ , and trump card or no trump card, she had _Fiendfyre_ , and she would be a fool to not use it at _all_ …

She took a sharp breath and made her mental link with the serpent of Fiendfyre within her, letting it bubble up her throat like lava, ready to lash out. She wouldn't quite kill Jugson, of course, but taking out his _legs_ would certainly be an acceptable display of violence, wouldn't it? Really, she told herself, what she'd _try_ to do would be melt the ice beneath his feet. _If_ said feet got in the way as collateral damage, then, you know what they say about omelets…

Her plan and mind were all made up when she heard an enraged shriek behind her —

She turned around —

There was Muriel Mulciber, all healed up, pointing her wand at her with murder in her eyes —

In that moment, Hermione didn't think or consider or plan.

She _breathed_.


	60. Present

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Something I forgot to mention in the last chapter: please read Crouch's lines in the voice of David Tennant. It is extremely rewarding. …Anyway, "Dalek" is for some reason still radiating an impenetrable shield of Writer's Block, but the good news is all that surplus writing has to go somewhere __(that's… that's how writing works, right?…). Hence, this behemoth of a chapter. Which, incidentally, officially crosses the 200k words milestone! Yay…? …Anyway, hope you like it. As usual, thanks to those who Review, Follow or Favorite, and if you haven't yet, please consider doing any or all of those things! Particularly the first one, I really like reviews._

 **Chapter LVII: _Present_**

' _What…_ '

And her voice was caught in her throat.

No, scratch that. Her voice was fine. It's her throat that was gone.

Along, it seemed, with everything else. She looked down and saw nothing, _felt_ nothing where her hands, her body should have been.

' _What the…_ '

She shook herself — _mentally_ shook herself, let the idea of shaking herself wash over her, but of course there was nothing to be really shaken in her state. What _was_ her state? A state of mind, probably. She was dreaming. Something like that. Surely she couldn't be dead… surely… but the _Fiendfyre_ — what if the protection had failed, what if her body had been destroyed along with Muriel Mulciber's ?… No. No. Now that she thought about it, she remembered the strange feeling of spitting fire, a glimpse of the old crone's body flying into smoldering ash… and then herself collapsing backwards as if hit by a Stunning Spell.

Wait.

Oh.

Yeah, that was probably what happened. A stray Stunner from one of the other two duels that had been going around her. Or perhaps it wasn't a stray spell at all; perhaps someone had seen a weird purple girl suddenly spit cursed fire, had considered that a Dark Wizard had set the Frost Fair up and might have hidden minions in the crowd, and finally had jumped to conclusions. Perhaps.

Regardless, she was fairly sure that you weren't supposed to be conscious when you were Stunned. For a start, that sort of went against the basic idea of the curse. And then, well, if that was how this worked, surely, out of all the people who had been Stunned throughout history, _someone_ would have mentioned something, and then it would eventually have ended up inside one of her books. Wizards could be dense, but not _that_ dense.

Unless—

Perhaps the Stunning Spell got you into such a state of mind that you were conscious, fully conscious, while under its influence, _but_ once you were Rennervated, you couldn't retain it?

But then, if that was the case, then not long from now, Hermione would wake up and she would forget all of this. This was not a pleasant thought. It meant that who she was, right now, the person who remembered the reasoning she'd just carried out, would be gone. Dead. And what about all the people who had been Stunned, ever since the spell's inception? How many hours, in all of Time, of consciousness had been erased so?…

…

…Alright, so it wasn't very likely, but it was still a very disturbing line of thinking.

Fortunately, she pursued it no more when suddenly, a sort of _whirrrrllll_ -ing sound rang through the spaceless abyss and lit it with gold, and one by one she saw, lighting up, that damn harpsichord she had seen on and off and on again for months… and a chair, and a desk, and a flat bed that seemed hard and narrow — and the outline of a window a little farther…

She looked down again, and this time she saw the form of her purple hands. They weren't _really_ her hands, any more than the golden furniture was really furniture; they were all semi-transparent outlines shining through the darkness, like holograms, or ghosts, or—

Or—

She looked up, and there was a man standing in front of her.

"Professor Grindelwald."

Oh, she had her voice back, albeit a little echoey. Good.

She had apparently materialized in Hologram Nurmengard. …Less good.

"…How in Merlin's name are you even _here_ ," Grindelwald said, advancing towards her. "What… are you dead? Are you a ghost? But Nurmengard is warded against even that—no. Not a ghost. You— _what_ is _this_?"

"Well, I don't know if this will be a comfort or make it all even more frustrating," Hermione offered, "I haven't the faintest idea. One moment you're breathing fire at a Death Eater, and the next, you're a disembodied spectre who teleported into the most heavily-guarded fortress on the Earth. What a world! Right?"

Grindelwald's eyebrows had jumped higher up on his forehead than should have been allowed by the laws of physics. When he spoke, however, it was more of a quiet, subdued suggestion. Oddly enough.

"I think, that I am going to need… some context."

* * *

So she told him about the Frost Fair, and the reveal of the Death Eaters, and the death of Master Flamel, and the lost Weasley child, and the Battle on the Ice. And she went back and she told him about Azkaban and Fiendfyre, and Rufus Grinch and his Dementor refugees.

"…Very well then," said Grindelwald, a look of sincere concern settling on his features. "Yes, Crouch is making his move. Young fool. Too soon. He lost at least one good servant. Perhaps more; you did not see the end of the battle."

"Hey, that's true," Hermione interjected, her ethereal face brightening. "I _didn't_. Perenelle and Crouch were still jousting back then. Perhaps he's done for already. Crouch himself, that is. Not just his cronies."

"I wish I could share your enthusiasm," shrugged Grindelwald, "but I doubt it. It is possible that Crouch may fail to kill Mme Flamel, but if he has any sense in him, then he will have arranged ways to depart unhindered if he senses the duel is going her way. You have not seen the last of him, no, I don't think."

"Oh." Her face fell. "…But then, maybe he doesn't have that sort of foresight. He _did_ appear quite mad."

"Don't confuse madness and lack of sense," the old tyrant warned her. "They are two very different things. I should know, having suffered from one… but thankfully, never the other."

"Ah… I see," she accepted, remembering that since he _had_ planned the Frost Fair all along, 'lack of foresight' did not appear to indeed be one of Bartemius Crouch Junior's defining character flaws. "I'll trust you. …Alright, so you've got all the context you could need. Let's see now. What _am_ I?"

Grindelwald's spectral brow furrowed. He half-raised a hand towards his face, meaning to thoughtfully stroke a mustache that he had long since shaven. Resting on the harpsichord with his other hand, he lost himself in reflexion for a few moments.

It was, actually, quite amusing. When Grindelwald had to _think_ , he did so in the most buffoonishly conspicuous fashion, as a pantomime character would. Dumbledore, fortunately for his reputation, thought in a much more conventional fashion — his blue eyes took on a faraway look, and before you knew, he had stopped listening to whatever you were saying. Only when concentrating on the deepest of problems would something a little more whimsical come out, as the Headmaster of Hogwarts began to _hum_ to himself — not music, just a sort of low buzzing like that of a bumblebee. Hermione had observed it on a few occasions, and laughed about it with Minerva and the Sorting Hat—

"Bmmmmmmmmzmmmmmmm…"

…oh, great. Fantastic. _He_ did it _too_ , on top of everything else. Well. Whatever solved the mystery quickest.

"A- _ha!_ Eureka! I have found it!"

"Great! Brilliant," she said. "But, erm, Professor…"

"Yes?"

"…How theatrical can you _get_?!"

Grindelwald blinked in confusion, but this lasted only a second. A knowing smile lit his wrinkled face.

"Oh, my dear Miss Granger, you have no idea," he answered, before taking a more serious tone. "Well, as I said: I believe that I have found the answer. Let me see if you can figure it out for yourself. Tell me, how often have these… visions of harpsichords… been troubling you?"

"Oh, now and then," she replied, evasive. She didn't really see his point, yet.

"But… never, I think, in the week-ends, or at night?"

"Nno…" she confirmed. "I say! You're right, that's odd. Wait… wait… of course!… Your lessons — intervals — I'm getting visions through Albus's Remote-Projector, am I not? Whenever you've switched it on on _your_ end but its twin in Hogwarts is _off_ — and of course, it happens in that order, you can't control the one in Hogwarts yourself so it's on a timer, you switch yours a few minutes early then you switch off a few moments _after_ the original automatically — { _sweet scales_ …}"

The 1994 Defence Professor was nodding his head in approval, beaming like a teacher satisfied with a student's progress — which was, in the end, what he _was_ right at this moment, not officially in office though he may have been.

"But wait!…" she said. " _Why_ is this happening? Why should I get such? And why am I now appearing _only_ here as a purple shade? Speaking of which, why on Earth am I appearing purple even though everything on your end appears golden regardless of its true color? Actually, my robes are purple now, and they definitely weren't in real life… what-"

Grindelwald shushed her with a finger.

"So many questions…" he chuckled. "The first has a simple answer. You recall the circumstances of your young schoolmate Master Wilkes's _interference_ in your first Regeneration, I presume?"

Her mouth rounded in a slight 'ooooh'.

 _Of course_.

A few months ago, when she had regained a non-cursed body thanks to a Regeneration Potion, her adorably treacherous Slytherin minion Douglas Wilkes had been bribed by Helen Monroe to try to highjack the Potion for Grindelwald, which he had 'achieved' by dipping the Remote-Projector that transferred Grindelwald's image to Hogwarts _in_ the Potion just before Hermione used it.

It had not seemed to have any particular effects at the time, but… why _shouldn't_ there have been, in hindsight? It's not as though you could normally contaminate magic potions with any foreign enchanted artifact heedless of consequences. Snape threw a hissy fit whenever a Gryffindor let so much as a speck of dust find its way into a brew — though to be fair, Snape threw hissy fits about just about anything if it caught his fancy.

The point was, when she thought about it, the theory made sense. Each of the ingredients in the Resurrection Potion imbued its central quality to the new body. This was actually the reason she was purple — Orga's Acromantula's blood granting her new blood its own brand of magic. The Remote-Projector's main function was to project images of Grindelwald's room in Nurmengard onto another location… and combined with the Potion, this had resulted in these images being projected right into her soul.

Neat.

"Okay then," she said, as if challenging Grindelwald to tie up his all-but-proven theory, "why purple?"

"Remember, Miss Granger," the old wizard answered without missing a beat, " _your_ ability to beam yourself to _me_ is an echo of the setting of the Hogwarts Projector that allows it to show images of the classroom to _me_. And if the transfer happens in reverse…"

"…then the colors are reversed," Hermione finished. "So, purple instead of yellow. And if _I_ happen to _actually_ be purple, that's just a coincidence."

"Hmhm," nodded the wizard.

There was a pause.

" _Yes_ ," Hermione broke the silence, "that explains _most_ everything, but it still doesn't tell me why I'm now existing _only_ as a projection in your mind rather than being in control of my own body."

"Oh, simple!" Grindelwald laughed, "in previous cases, the connection was activated during the day, so it superimposed with your conscious experiences. Now however, I surmise your real body is unconscious somewhere, even though it is day; so there is no _interference_."

"I suppose that does explain matters rather," she said. "Thank you then. But… two last questions."

"Yes?"

"First, why _was_ your Projector switched on?"

"Simple," he answered. "Luck and happenstance. You see, the Projectors are the fastest way to contact me that Dumbledore has. As soon as he heard about the Frost Fair, he informed me and asked for my tactical advice."

"He trusts you with giving him _tactical advice_?"

" _Now_ he does…" he answered with a humble smile, "apparently, and I am deeply honored. This would never have happened even three years ago. At any rate, I gave him a… _pointer_ or two on what I think a crazed, master-less minion might do… then he signed off on his end. For a few minutes I remained lost in thought, amazed at, yes, the fact that Albus had sincerely asked for my opinion on such a grave matter, that he had trusted me so… I didn't think to switch on _my_ Projector, until suddenly, _you_ appeared."

"Alright," she said. "Second question. How do I get back?"

Grindelwald looked a little embarrassed.

"I am not a god, you know," he finally admitted. "I deduced it faster than you, but this absurd connection is as strange to me as it is to you. Which means I have no special insight into its workings. As far as I know, all it does is allow your mind to spend its coma with me; there's certainly no 'Awaken Fraudulent Flesh Receptor's Body' button on my Projector that I could press, if that is what you are imagining. Either you wait here with me until your body is Rennervated back in England…"

"No, really, you're very kind but I'd rather not," she protested, not without awkwardness. "Talking to you is all very nice but… I'll only get distracted… I still have _things_ to do when I get back. It could be that the battle is still raging on the Thames. I don't want to spend an hour having tea and crumpets with my Defence Professor until suddenly I'm thrust back into action. I'm still more or less in combat mode, so to speak, and I'd like to maintain it."

"Fair point," Grindelwald opined. "Then the best thing to do is — _this_."

Grindelwald did _something_ — in the split-second that he bent forwards, reaching out for something unseen, Hermione guessed — he was going to switch off his Projector, returning her to her coma, and in, subjectively, no time at all, she'd wake up as herself —

 _Click_

— and she knew no more.

* * *

'R…n…v…'

 _Huh?_

 _…_

" _Rennervate!_ "

A jolt.

 _Oh!_

 _So I'm back, then_.

Becoming aware of her revived body, she shook herself vigorously, getting rid of some of the snow that she felt coating her body. That's right — it was snowing, now — she opened her eyes, squinting in the white light of a bright winter's day. A silhouette towered over her, a thin, relatively attractive young man with red hair and horn-rimmed glasses, who stood, perhaps, a little too straight; on his shoulder was a large, grey Post Owl, a screech owl if she wasn't mistaken.

"Percy Weasley!" she recognized. "Thank you. Er! What are you doing here? Last I heard of you, you were busy working with Barty Crouch — _Senior_ , I mean, obviously —"

"You're babbling, Miss Granger," he remarked with a kindly, if slightly condescending, smile. "Judging by what I heard from Ron and Ginny, that's a good omen. …Yes, well, I may be Mr Crouch's secretary, but this _is_ Christmas. I don't know what you've heard but we Ministry workers celebrate holidays too."

"Hoot," said the grey owl.

"Yes, Hermes, so do our owls," Percy granted, giving his owl a conciliatory smile.

"I… I don't doubt it," she said awkwardly, sitting up against the tent and wiping the last of the snow from her robes. "I… hh… Oh dear. I've been Stunned before, but it was never this bad…"

"I know!" said Percy, "Why, I had to Rennervate you _twice_! I think you must have caught one of Professor Flitwick's spells. He's an expert duelist, retired, but—"

"Yes, I _know_ ," interrupted an annoyed Hermione. "As I was _saying_ , I know you must have holidays like everyone else, but I didn't see you earlier. And I _had_ looked through the crowd for people I knew. If I had spotted you I would have said hello."

"Yyes…" Percy said awkwardly. "Well… I wasn't exactly _mingling_ …"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought, I thought," Percy said, adjusting his collar, as even _Hermes_ seemed to look away, "I assumed that such a large gathering would be a fine, to erm, promote… I have this campaign, you see…"

"Oh?" she said innocently. "A political campaign? Campaign for what?"

After looking round to make sure no one else was listening, Percy finally answered, in a very very small voice:

" _Thicker cauldron bottoms_."

…It was very hard not to laugh.

"I had this entire demonstration planned out, with two Collapsible Cauldrons," he continued, visibly contrite, pointing at a colorless, featureless little stand in the back where, indeed, there stood two apparently-identical cauldrons. "I meant to illustrate the dangers of thin cauldron bottoms by brewing identical Fungiface Potions in both, knowing that the second would rupture when the third step of brewing was reached. I still have all the ingredients right here, and the cue cards I meant to use… but when the Fair opened and I tried to get people to come and see, none of them, not a single one, would… erm…"

"I can't imagine why," Hermione said, making no effort to appear sincere. "And then?"

"Hah… then of course, the battle started."

"What did you do?"

"I am no great duelist," Percy said, trying to look as honorable as possible as he admitted his un-Gryffindorness, "and so, I decided it was best to make for a, erm, tactical retreat."

"Hoot, _hoot_ , hooot," Hermes interjected.

"Yes, of course," Percy said quickly, " _Hermes_ stayed, and fought courageously. Hrm."

"Looks like your Owl is more of a Gryffindor than you are," Hermione teased the sulking young man. "…Wait. You understand what he says?"

"Eh, yes, more or less," Percy replied, taken aback. "It's… it's nothing special. It just took a bit of patience and method… marking down the probable of meaning of certain hoots, certain yips… yes, I suppose I do understand Owlish more than the average. Not that I can speak it to any degree. I did try, but alack, I was met only with Hermes's hooting laughter…"

"Percy, Percy, Percy," Hermione said, all contempt dropped, "that's _amazing_. That's… that's… combined with the Babblebook, this could change the _world_!"

Percy quirked an eyebrow, nervously adjusting his glasses.

"I… really?… Wait, what's a Babblebook?"

"I'll explain later," she said. "Percy. Your Owlish-English correspondences. Have you put them in writing?"

"Miss Granger," he answered, "do you _know_ me?"

"Good point," she said. "Well, if you can mail copies to me as soon as it is convenient…"

"Why, erm, of course… I…wl…"

"Oh, and, about those cauldron regulations?" she added, giving the timid young warlock no chance to let his tongue get its act together, "I'll see if I can drop in a word with Cornelius."

"Cornelius," Percy repeated, bemused. "Cornelius? Cornelius who?"

Then his eyes widened comically. His mouth fell open.

"Y-yes please! Please do!" he stammered in quick-fire, having finally caught up. "That-that would be, Merlin, oh God, th-that would be absolutely tremend-"

Unfortunately, Hermione was no longer listening. Instead, she had gotten to her feet and was looking around the ice-bank-turned-battlefield, still littered with broken tents and a few specks of blood. The people were gone, save for the injured, tended to by a few Medi-Wizards. (Looking a bit further, she caught a glimpse of a very bossy-looking Auror Withecombe-Greengrass ordering lower-ranking magical policemen about, and immediately resolved _not_ to wander that way and say hello. )

Obviously, the Battle was over.

On the other hand, the injured were _still_ being tended to, _right here_.

That meant it hadn't been a _long_ time since it was over.

And these were the holidays.

And that meant—

"Percy, out of curiosity, your cousin, what was his name?"

"I — you mean —" Percy said, again taken aback, a great sadness washing over his brown eyes, "you mean the one the Crimson Heir—"

"Yes," Hermione confirmed. "Oh, and his name is Barty Crouch Jr. … _Please_ don't start another You Know Who situation."

She turned towards the Medi-Wizards and law enforcement, though she knew none of them were paying attention, and added:

"…That goes for all of you!…"

She turned back towards the grief-stricken Percy just in time for him to mutter:

"…Wesley. Wesley was his name."

"Wesley?" Hermione mouthed off in disbelief. "Who on Earth names their son Wesley Weasley?!"

"Well, uncle Eric, apparently," Percy answered in the same derisive tone before catching himself. "Hermione! Stop being so… don't joke about him! He's _dead_!"

"Aw, no he's not," Hermione reassured him. "And it's Hermione now! Nice! I don't mind. …Alright. Hang on, brave Wesley Weasley, I'm coming to get you."

"That's - that's impossible," Percy spluttered. "Hermione! Hermione Granger! You can't save him! The Crimson- Barty Crouch Junior _killed_ him!"

"Less then five hours ago," Hermione added.

But Percy just gave her an odd look.

She sighed.

"Oh for God's sake. _Look around my neck_."

It took a few more seconds, and then Percy's eyes practically doubled in size, overstepping the bounds of his glasses.

"Oh, and I'm going to need that Gillyweed you were going to use in the demonstration. And a watch"

Without a word, he handed both over.

"Thank you."

* * *

Funny thing, as she swam down beneath the ice an hour earlier, hidden from sight, Hermione barely felt the cold. She wasn't sure whether it was the Fiendfyre or the Acromantula blood, but it was definitely convenient.

Guiding herself based on the shadow-like silhouettes of the men above, treading on the thin but sturdy magical ice, she maneuvered to be just beneath Wesley, a few feet away from Bartemius.

She checked her watch, tried to hear what Crouch and Wesley were saying above…

'… _do you say to that?_ '

'…'

'… _Potter blew him up!_ …'

There it was…

'…'

' _Then blown up it shall-_ '

Now!

A few seconds before Crouch cast _his_ , Hermione cast a weaker Exploding Spell right beneath Wesley's feet — enough to crack the ice, and possibly singe his shoes, but nothing that could seriously hurt him. The little boy fell like a rock as the ground he was walking on disappeared; she grabbed his ankles and dragged him further down, despite his weak kicks of protest. Above, she heard the conflagration of Crouch's spell, which everyone thought had killed the child.

Not wasting a minute, she stuffed what was left of the Gillyweed in the boy's mouth. She shot him a _glare_ and he swallowed it. Soon he'd grown gills and fins. He took deep breaths of water, then tried to speak; but of course, it still came out quite bubbly.

Hermione shushed him before taking his hand and leading him away. They swam and swam in silence, avoiding the crocodilian monster brought for the Fair and its smaller cohorts, until they reached the end of the ice. They made surface and swam to the ground.

Which, this being the River Thames, was crowded with gawking Muggles who pointed in disbelief at their fins, and his wizard's robes, and her inexplicable swimsuit, and her bared purple skin.

 _Damn it._

Hermione hated having to lie to Muggles.

Although… who said she'd have to?

After giving Wesley a quick look that told him to stay quiet as well as anything, she turned to the stunned onlookers and explained with an innocent smile:

"Don't mind us! We were just part of a masquerade!"

There. You couldn't say she'd told a lie.

* * *

A quarter of an hour later, rerobed and warmed up, the young witch and wizard sat in the living room of the Granger house, warming themselves by a chimney fire.

"You saved me…" Wesley repeated with a daft smile. "Hermione Granger saved me! This is so _cool_!"

Hermione could have just nodded politely, but on the trip back, she had had _another_ idea.

"Actually… if you and your cousin Percy could… avoid mentioning my part in this…?" she asked the young Weasley.

"Anything you say, Miss," Wesley agreed with an attempt at a military salute. "But, er — why? I mean, aren't people going to ask questions? I really, really think they'll want to know how I survived the bad wizard's evil curse."

"I'm sure they will, Wesley," Hermione chuckled, "and that's the point. I hear you like Harry Potter. Well then… how would you like to be the new Boy Who Lived?"

Wesley gaped and then nodded enthusiastically (how could his response have been anything else?). Hermione gave a warm smile and, gazing into the fireplace, whispered:

"Merry Christmas, Harry."


	61. The Incident at Dinnertime

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _I am so. Sorry. …But I did warn you this would happen, eventually! Writer's block combined with real-life time constraints is a deadly combination and it was always looming. I don't think a month is too outrageous a hiatus, though, and hopefully it will have been for the better of the story in the long run. In the meantime, be sure to share your thoughts on this chapter and the story as a whole through Reviews! Thanks to everyone who has already done so on previous chapters!_

 **Chapter LVIII: _The Incident at Dinnertime_**

New Year's passed. The _Other Paper_ celebrated their first such milestone with a double-length issue, whose report on the Battle on the Ice gave a lion's share to building up the mystique of the new and improved Boy Who Lived. A very smug photograph of Wesley Weasley himself adorned the front page, right next to an artist's rendering of the lucky young wizard's face-off with Barty Crouch Junior, the Crimson Heir of Voldemort.

Hermione understood that the (thankfully non-sentient) piece was the work of Dobby, the _Paper_ 's Elf reporter whom she had helped liberate from the slave-driving clutches of Lucius Malfoy. It was… interesting, its warped proportions and wobbly lines betraying an amateur's job, but remaining insufficient to drown out a sense of enthusiasm, of charming creativity and energy that the painting radiated. The best way she could describe Mr Dobby's _Battle on the Ice_ — Hermione wasn't proud of herself for thinking it, because it sounded rather patronizing — was that it was very alike to the first few sketches of a very young child, but one who had in him the makings of a celebrated master of the brush.

Next were interviews, lots of interviews, capped with insightful and eloquent commentary from Quentin the Quick-Quotes Quill. It ranged from the incoherent, yet undeniably irked grunts that the reporters had gotten out of eyewitness and participant in the wider battle, Aberforth Dumbledore, to a two-page spread from Gilderoy Lockhart about his heroic battle with the Imperiused Erumpents. Hermione was honestly surprised to hear that the disgraced Defence Professor had been at the Frost Fair; not only hadn't she spotted him (which was fairly surprising, as he tended to hound the spotlight wherever he went), but as far as she knew only the Yetis had been Imperiused, not the Erumpents. Not even the Death Eaters were so foolish as to interfere with the exploding beasts' careful training when both parties were standing on a floor of easily-cracked ice. Unlike Hermione, the _Paper_ didn't dare doubt Lockhart's account (though they did include, without further comment, the words of Mr Orgon Garoux, the French Erumpent handler, who appeared quite befuddled at the suggestion that anything had happened to his darlings during the Battle save for a bad fright).

A few pages of comic strips, riddles and crosswords followed, signed by one _Cochinchinis Calamus_ , another Quick-Quotes Quill whom Quentin had taken under his wing, if she remembered from one of the _Other Paper_ staff's letters. They separated the reporting of the actual Battle from pages upon pages upon pages of Wesley bragging and his parents bragging and his numerous older sisters bragging. His older sister Mafalda Weasley was particularly verbose, lacing her every statement with fine allusions to all sorts of current subjects for gossip which Hermione didn't even try to understand. The cartoonishly-named Wanda Weasley was little better, nominally straying less from her topic than Mafalda but doing her best to play up her part in making her brother the boy he was today.

About the only information of worth Hermione found was that Wesley's branch of the Weasley family was something of an inverted mirror of Ron and Ginny's, with seven children and the youngest of the lot being the only boy (a weak blood curse that sounded more like a fun-loving jinx could not entirely be ruled out, knowing some of the Weasleys; she'd have to check their family tree to see if it held).

The rest was drivel that only differed from the _Daily Prophet_ in that, no matter how extravagant the interviewee's boasts, their words were never twisted and all the reports signed by the actual journalists were verified fact. Still, it couldn't be helped, and neither could the Order of Merlin (First Class!) which Fudge awarded to a beaming Wesley just a week after the fact, nor even the lengthy article by Bathilda Bagshot, printed at the end of the _Paper_ , where the respected old scholar expounded upon the common traits of Chosen Ones and the usual historical context of their appearance, and performed remarkable leaps of logic to try and explain how Wesley ticked each box. For instance, she'd hit a bit of a snag when it came to the fact that Wesley's parents did not, in fact, have any personal enmity or history with Barty Crouch Junior; but then she'd dug up that Wesley's cousin Percy was the secretary of Barty's father, and she'd called it a day.

Speaking of the adorably stuck-up Percy, he soon made good on his promise and sent Hermione a crate full of neatly ordered notes. Out of good faith, Hermione tried to read through the mass, only to give up in-between two yawns when she reached Page 3, going back to her earlier plans to hire a Ravenclaw to do the job for her — through Douglas if need be. Or maybe she could get Maximilian to use that boredom-removing trick of his, and perhaps even speed up his brain and hands so that he could copy the entire pile into the _Babblebook_ in one night.

* * *

At last school resumed, ringing a few more steps towards magical mastery, a reunion with her friends on the train — and a grandiloquent speech from Helen Monroe at dinner on the first day. It went on for quite a while, with several Prefects trying to get to her only to be rebuffed by the ring of enthusiasts that surrounded her, until she reached a conclusion;

"…and so, I ask you, I ask all of you, no matter your Year or House or parentage: what are you? Wizards, or _Muggles_?!"

To this, Ts, who was partaking in Hermione's plate of pot-roast at the time, noted that this was a bit of a pointless question since, if they were Muggles, the children could not have entered Hogwarts in the first place and so wouldn't be there to answer the question. Hermione gave a motherly sigh and promised the London snake to teach him about rhetorics next Sunday.

Tsh's quiet doubt was the exception out of Helen's audience, as all the others who ad been listening to the Dark Lady of Hufflepuff's ramblings, and even a few who hadn't, broke out in shouting — either enthusiastic or outraged, as the case may be.

Draco Malfoy himself raised a fist and crowed "WIZARD!"; then, having realized on whom he had just cheered, he sent a Knee-Reversing Jinx to the Hufflepuff table to keep up appearances. With nary an effort, Monroe deflected the spell using a small pocket mirror se wore as a pendant, sending back at the Slytherins. Her aim was not quite good enough to hit Malfoy, however, and instead it hit a Seventh-Year — a short young man with a dark hood, dark hair, and a look that was darker yet, sporting a hint of a goatee. The wounded Slytherin quickly reversed the Jinx, narrowed his eyes at Draco —

He opened his mouth, only to find himself mute, just like all the other students in the Hall. At the Head Table, Professor Dumbledore had risen, and still held up the Elder Wand, having just completed a Silencing Charm.

Hermione thought this was a golden opportunity to test a technique Dumbledore had tried to teach her — a wordless counter to _Silencio_. Of course, wordless magic in general was not in the 4th Year curriculum, and rightly so; she had found it _very_ challenging; but for a gifted student like her with the stubbornness to practice over and over and over again, mastering a single wordless spell was manageable. And simple logic dictated that if you were going to pick just one wordless spell, this was the one to pick, just like _Accio Wand_ was your top priority if you started learning wandless magic.

She took out her wand, performed the complex motion, and coughed very softly. It worked.

"What is the meaning of this?!" someone said from the Head Table.

None answered.

"Well? _No one?_ " the nasal voice of Professor Snape insisted.

Dumbledore shuffled next to the Potions Master and whispered:

"Severus, I commend the spirit of the question — especially as you asked it, instead of assigning detentions first. However, please observe… that my… actions… rather prevent our pupils from… ahem…"

The Head of Slytherin's eyes, which so far had only been looking down upon the Hall at large, focused down on specific students. Many of whom were uselessly opening and closing their mouths like so many goldfish, still unable to make a single sound.

Snape's face flushed a mildly more vivid yellow than was usual, _harrumphed_ , and sat down with no further comment.

Hermione felt this was the appropriate moment to interject.

"Actually, _I_ can explain," she announced, walking towards the Head Table.

"Ah!" an enthused Professor Dumbledore cried. "Hermione! Wonderful display—"

" _Must_ you take _every opportunity_ to _SHOW OFF?!_ " interrupted Snape.

The Headmaster spared a disapproving glance for the Potioneer before resuming:

"As I was saying, very good work — albeit unnecessary; I think these few moments of silence ought to have pacified your schoolmates very nicely. Let us see. Students? Should I lift my Silencing Charm, do you foresee that you would return to causing ruckus and turbulence? Well, do you?"

Dozens of distressed goldfish heads were shaken in a negative response.

"There, you see? Now, Hermione, if you would go back to your seat. I shall see you on Saturday at the usual appointed time."

Hermione complied and trotted along. Behind her, Dumbledore gave a wide swish of the Elder Wand, and all of a sudden sound returned to the dining hall — not just speech, but also the faint sound of breathing, the noise people made when they shifted on their seats, the clattering of cutlery — the thousand little noises of life.

"Miss Monroe, if you please?" Professor Dumbledore called.

"Yes?" answered a voice.

(A voice which was not, in fact, Helen Monroe's.)

"…Miss Parkinson," he scolded, "I happen to desire to get across to Helen Monroe, Hufflepuff Prefect. You are not her."

"I am the Mouth of Monroe," Pansy replied, with a remarkably straight face. "Speak to me, Professor, if you must speak. My Lady will not be distracted during meals."

"Yet she had no qualms interrupting ours?" came Dumbledore's retort. "In clear violation, might I add, of our school rules. The 1218 educational decree bans political rallies at dinnertime."

"And don't forget the 1978 Crouch laws against publicly supporting Dark Lords!" prompted Professor Vector.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Dumbledore sighed, "Gellert never was a 'Dark Lord'! That was only ever the Turban's delusion, fueled by ill-chosen childhood readings and an ego the likes of which was only ever rivaled by—"

"I'm sorry, Albus, but did you say _Turban_?"

"…oh, forgive me, Septima," he apologized. "A Grangerism, that is all."

(Grangerism, eh? Well, it didn't sound too bad… although 'violinism' would have been more amusing.)

"At any rate, Miss Parkinson…" Dumbledore said slowly, "you may… inform… Miss Monroe that twenty points will be taken from Hufflepuff House over this."

"I will, sir."

"While we are on the subjects, three points to Gryffindor House for Hermione Granger's flawless display of a wordless _Resonorus_ … Oh, and five points _from_ Slytherin House for Professor Snape's inability to hold his forked tongue. If you will pardon an old man's spot of wordplay."

Oddly, Snape _glowered_ but he didn't protest any more than that.

"Now that this is taken care of, you may return to your activities both pleasant and nutritious. As the Polish say, _dziękuję za słuchanie_!"

And, leading by example, the alchemist returned to his throne-like chair and buried himself in his mushroom soup.

Ron, on the other hand, didn't pick up his fork for several seconds, instead choosing to stare in awe at the Head Table.

This was, possibly, the most extraordinary thing that had happened that day. Dean took it upon himself to try and restore the balance of the cosmos, and nudged the Weasley:

"Ron, your _food_!"

"If you don't want it," Seamus added, "you can always give it to m—"

" _NonoI'meatingit,_ " protested Ron, stuffing a spoonful of soup into his wide mouth.

He then said, without having actually swallowed the soup:

"It's just… did Dumbledore just… take points from Snape? He can _do_ that?!"

"Well — he can now," Hermione answered. "Ever since a certain red-haired boy wrote to a certain purple girl with such a suggestion, and said purple girl, looking for a good Christmas present, forwarded the suggestion to her good friend Minerva, who forwarded it to the Sorting Hat, who forwarded it to the Headmaster. …Merry Christmas, Ron."

"That's… er… _I_ gave you the idea? Did I? When?"

Hermione did a bit of mental maths — and blushed.

"About a year ago. The chain of transmission… _may_ have been a bit slow there. Still!"

"Yeah. That was bloody amazing!"

Hermione answered to his glowing praise with a timid smile and a glowing, violet blush. She then turned towards Harry and poked his arm with her fork.

"See, Harry? No vanity to it, but _that_ 's the sort of reaction I expected with _your_ present."

"…his present?" Ginny piped up. "He hasn't mentioned any present…"

"Er… no," Ron concurred, "neither have you."

"…Should have known," she muttered. "Well. If you have given a passing glance to the papers these last few weeks, I need only say one word…"

"Yeah? What's that?"

She hissed:

{ _Wesley_.}

"I'm sorry, what was that?" asked Seamus, comically uncorking a finger from his ear.

"Sorry, Seamus," Hermione explained, "but you are _not_ supposed to be in the know here. Hence the Parseltongue."

"Oh, fine, be that way," Seamus pretended to grumble, though his amusement was showing.

She returned her attention to the jaw-dropping Ron and Ginny.

{ _Cousin Wesley? You saved he?_ }

"{ _him_ }, Ron. But yes." She slipped back into Parseltongue. { _I didn't tell because I wanted people to think of him as a new Boy Who Lived… thus making_ _Harry_ _old news. I_ _thought_ _he would appreciate it, but he's been about as cheerful as Teacher Snape so far._ }

{ _Hmm_ ,} grunted Harry, looking away. { _Guess so._ }

"Harry… didn't you have good holidays?" Ginny asked, trying to take hold of his hand, which he withdrew further away. "You told me you were going to have gun with Hagrid and Alastair and things. You… you didn't do any of that, did you?! Merlin's bottom, I could _hex_ you—! I knew I should have stayed over with you—"

"Don't be silly, Gin," Ron, joked, "you wouldn't have gotten the chance to hex the Twins if you'd done that."

"Hex the Twins?" Hermione caught. "Congratulations!"

"…no," said Harry, finally deigning to answer the question, rubbing at his scar. "It's… I have merely done… a lot of thinking, while I was alone, in the Castle. …And… what if I _liked_ being the Boy Who Lived? Huh? What _if_?"

" _What if_ is right," Hermione snapped back. "In the four years we've known you, you've _never_ said _one word_ to indicate you liked the status — the closest you came was when you said you used to think your scar looked pretty awesome, and that was before you learned that it was really a curse scar from a Kil—"

"Hermione I — I —" he stammered

Hermione was hopeful for a brief moment; but a dark look washed over her friend. He tapped his scar disdainfully.

"I've just done a lot of thinking. And in a way, I think… I think this scar is the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Harry, how can you _say_ that — your parents _died_ —"

"Yeah, and I didn't! I survived!" he shouted. "They got _killed_ , and instead of being raised by weak people who got killed, I got raised with the powers of the man who could kill the weaklings. So I grew up on the rough — good! It made me stronger, even stronger! And now look at me! —"

"Harry, can you even _hear_ yourself?"

"Hmm…" mumbled Harry, the violent light in his eyes fading to make room for the same old apathy.

* * *

"Well then, Hermione," said Albus, "your Occlumentic shields appear to be up to scratch — always a little stuff, I suppose, but that is inevitable — it is the structure of your mind itself that causes this effect. …Now, we _could_ conclude this session… but something tells me Mr Potter will not be coming for _his_ lesson, judging by the way he has looked at me all week. We have half an hour's free time before Miss Weasley's turn. And if i am not mistaken, you would gladly fill these thirty minutes with a spot of soul-pouring conversation."

"Really? " she answered. "Well… I _am_ a little out of sorts… sad, and worried… but really, the one who needs help isn't me. It's Harry. I don't know what's gotten into him."

"He is heading down a dark path," Dumbledore said, solemn. "I have seen it happen often enough. Once from the… inside."

"You don't have to imply and hint, you know," she remarked. "You were in love in Grindelwald in your mad youth, and planned to take over the world with him. I _know_."

Dumbledore made a choking sound, his glasses nearly falling off.

"How did you—"

"Albus, have you ever considered that if you give someone _four years' worth_ of not-so-subtle hints, it becomes _trivially easy_ to piece together the truth, as complete as if you'd told the story bare and straight?… Not to mention the way you and Professor Grindelwald look at each other whenever you're in the same room."

"Truly, it's that obvious?…"

Dumbledore looked quite pained.

"Oh, I don't think _most people_ know," she reassured him. "But for people who've known you closely for more than a few months?… Yes, yes it _is_ that obvious. Also, even if I lacked the slightest shred of deductive skill, you may be forgetting what you blurted out when you were fighting with Snape over the Resurrection Stone. "

"…Ah," he rememebered, drumming his fingers on his desk. "I see."

"You know, I know, Gellert knows, no one's particularly proud, let's move on," she decreed. "So. What surprises me, about Harry, is… well, whenever you hear about Dark Wizards, ones who weren't born psychopaths at least, then either they were born and raised by other Dark Wizards, or they grew up friendless. Harry's… neither, is he? I mean, the Dursleys are awful people, but why _now_? For over three years now he's had us for close friends, me, and Ron, and the Basilisk, and everyone here at Hogwarts…"

"Gellert and I had loved ones too, you know," Dumbledore shared. "It did not stop us. We merely forgot, and I didn't remember until it was too late."

"Yes, but you were arrogant hotheads your whole lives long… no offence," she retorted. "Harry has never been anything else than sweet, humble and kind. Occasionally a bit cocky, I suppose, when he's playing Quidditch, but that can't be the source, because Ron tells me he _didn't_ go to Quidditch training this week."

"We will sort out Harry Potter in time," sighed Dumbledore. "But for now, it is about Hermione Granger that I wish to speak. About… the Battle on the Ice."

"Uh… Prokofiev?"

"Wh- no! The Frost Fair! Crouch!"

"Oh! Right, right, sorry. Yes?"

"Well… you killed Muriel Mulciber, didn't you? I do believe this was the first time you… it's never easy, believe me, I know. And as your teacher, as the Head of the Order of the Phoenix, _and_ as your friend, I wish to make sure that you are… coping."

"Sure," she said without a care in the world. "I don't like having to kill people, but it's inevitably going to happen now and then… it won't keep me awake at night, don't worry. Muriel Mulciber was a vile woman who'd have killed many more people if I hadn't spat fire at her. And with the Resurrectorium in place, I was even able to say sorry."

Dumbledore didn't quite know what to say.

"I don't think she took my apology very gracefully, mind you," Hermione added, "but that's all on her."


	62. We've Lost the Minister

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Who's back in the swing of writing chapters way too quickly? One guess, guess who!… Some surprise appearances and revelations in this chapter (though I'll admit I'm kind of spoiling the biggest one from the get-go). Some set-up (isn't there always?), some jokes (as there must be to make this story what it is). I hope you like it. As always, please review if you like the story. Or if you don't. Review, on general principle._

 **Chapter LIX: _We've Lost the Minister_**

Hermione's second post-Christmas week proceeded much like the first, in that the general joy of being back in Hogwarts was true to itself, but marred by Harry continuing to be inexplicably broody and sulky and all in all most un-Harry-like.

On Tuesday, Harry showed up wearing a bloody bandage over his forehead, nearly staggering down the moving staircases on his way to the Great Hall. This wasn't that odd in itself — Harry got into all kinds of scrapes, particularly with Quidditch — but when his friends all showed the appropriate amounts of concern (aside from Tsh, who started complimenting him on his new ribbon), he rebuffed them all and ate breakfast as far away from them as possible. Ever stranger, he wore the same bandages through the week, clearly as reluctant to seek out Madam Pomfrey's help as he had been theirs. On Thursday, Fred Weasley, hoping to get Harry to take the blasted thing off, sneaked up behind him and charmed it to be green and furry, but Harry hardly took notice.

Still, not everything was going wrong. Through Luna, Hermione managed to recruit a squadron of Ravenclaw amanuenses to begin copying down all known languages into the Babblebook, Owlish included, and she hoped to have it ready by February — she could hardly wait to add in the Dictaquill charms and begin work on the magical voicebox.

Helen Monroe had calmed down a little bit, and Hermione, deciding modesty was the better part of valor, didn't go tickle the sleeping dragon, despite a twinge of curiosity and the feeling that she ought to get to know the girl better (in part for her strategic value, in part because she seemed like a very interesting person, and in part because Helen _had_ saved her life that one time). When she broached the topic, Ron warned her that the Dark Lady was probably plotting something, and… he was probably right, but it would do no good to anyone to worry about it until something actually materialized. Besides, her central goal of bringing Grindelwald back to power was in itself so nonsensical that even if she somehow managed to get into Nurmengard or something, nothing too bad would happen; she'd just come face-to-face with the fact that her 'Lord' wouldn't budge from his cage, and that would be the end of that.

Her correspondance was the same hive of insanity as ever — a letter of news from her parents, giving her news of Nettle and the Dysons, came next to a stone tablet bearing the seal of the Goblin King and Lucius Malfoy's report of charities to which he had donated. Then there came letters from the two estranged Marauders. Remus's announced that he and the Great Basilisk would soon be returning from the Americas, while Jester White's contained gibberish words that jumped from the paper, hopped off the table, and trotted off to the Dungeons, where she later found them tugging on Snape's hair.

There were also the customary panicked cries for help from Minister Fudge, answered with impeccable tact and unfailing logic, which ensured that the British Isles _didn't_ sink into the depths because of an oversight in the Unspeakables' control group. (Statistically, of all the things Hermione had to keep an eye on in Fudge's place, the biggest threat to the integrity of the Solar System were the British Unspeakables, who had the mindset of the average movie mad scientist. This particular week, one of them had sent a formal request for permission to experiment on how to make the Gemino Curse work on Basilisk Venom. And Fudge, being the same old conciliatory imbecile, _was all set to give them the go-ahead._ )

* * *

On Friday, they had Charms Class. This was, usually, nothing out of the ordinary, but Professor Flitwick had dropped hints that they would be doing something of considerable interest in that particular lesson, and so the teenage wizards and witches (plus one Boggart) who assembled in front of the Charms Classroom at 1 p.m. was substantially more excited than the average Charms students.

Professor Flitwick dropped fifteen minutes late (which was quite unlike him). And 'dropped in' is here to be taken literally: to everyone's wonder, a round trapdoor opened in the ceiling of the corridor, and the minuscule man half-fell, half-jumped down into the crowd of students, slowing down his fall with a Feather-light Charm.

With agiddy grin, Flitwick looked around and said:

"Well? What are you all standing here for? Let's go!"

"Let's go _where_?" asked Neville.

Flitwick blinked.

"Ah," he coughed. "I… I haven't actually told you, have I… oh my giddy aunt. Oh, well. Follow me!"

And up he led them through stairways and corridors unending, watched by curious paintings and gargoyles, some of whom clearly hadn't seen another human being than Flich in many, many years.

"Come on now, don't lag, we've wasted enough time as it is…"

As they went, there were many abandoned rooms with the doors left open. Most of them were only classrooms where unused chairs collected dust and pixies, but for a brief moment, Hermione thought she'd glimpsed a darkened room with a _coffin_ —

"Hurry, hurry, hurry—"

She looked round and it was no longer there, and faster and faster they pressed on.

"Nearly there — come, come, follow me —"

By the time they reached their destination — a classroom identical to the usual Charms Classroom, for all intents and purposes — they were sweating and panting, clothes ruffled and feet sore. An outraged Seamus Finnegan produced his wristwatch and complained:

"Alright, Professor, what's the idea? We've been trampling about for —"

He checked the watch and his eyes _boggled_.

" — negative five minutes? What the _bloody hell_ —"

"I'd deduct points for language, Mr Finnegan," Flitwick said, "but you're quite right. It makes no sense at all."

Oh dear. Was Flitwick going Dumbledore?

He raised a finger.

" _Unless_ you understand the wonderful web of charms and enchantments that make up the Castle Hogwarts. And at the end of this lesson —"

Two dozen faces stared in awe.

"—you'll understand nothing at all. How could you? Even I have no idea how most of this is even possible. _But_. You may, possibly, be a little closer to the right track. And that's still something, isn't it? Now, basic stuff first. Can anyone tell me how Hogwarts was made? …Not you, Miss Granger, you read _Hogwarts: A History_ much too much for asking you to be fair to your classmates."

She lowered her hand. Ron spoke.

"There was an Architect, wasn't there…?"

"Correct! But tell me, Mr Weasley, did they build Hogwarts all in one piece?"

"No, they must have Conjured it somehow…"

"Wait, I thought —"

The debate went on, voices rising, until Flitwick put everyone's minds to rest. To his credit, Professor Flitwick knew more about the construction of Hogwarts than what Professor Bagshot had consigned in her masterpiece, and could deliver a better history lesson than Professor Cuthbert Binns ever had, before or after his death.

It turned out that Hogwarts had first been built, according to the Architect's plans, as a mostly non-magical castle, though some of the stonework had bene Transfigured rather than carved. None Conjured thought.

Well—

There _had_ been a Conjured tower, known simply as the Conjuration Tower, which Professor Slytherin used as his laboratory; but a few months after the Founders had begun to live in the Castle, Slytherin, as part of his experiments, had done _something_ that had launched the entire Conjuration Tower up into the night sky like an anachronistic rocket. Calculations indicated that the Tower had probably crashed somewhere on the Planet Mars, and, clearly quite intent on retrieving whatever was inside the Tower, Slytherin had built the Astronomy Tower where the Conjuration Tower had once stood, using it to scry into space, hoping to get a glimpse of his lost haunts and work out a plan to retrieve them. The plan was abandoned after Slytherin's exile, and, to make use of the damned Astronomy Tower, they had created the Astronomy Class.

That was all rather besides the point, of course — and nothing she hadn't known before, from the Sorting Hat.

The more salient point was that the Founders had only started the enchanting work once a working outline of the Castle was already in place. This meant that they had _not_ enchanted every stone as needed. Instead, they had used a rare and powerful spell known as the Transitive Charm, a complex enchantment with heavy ties to the simpler Protean Charm. A Transitive Charm, placed on an object, carried over its magical qualities to a network of other, similar objects if you linked them magically.

Thus there were, with Hogwarts, seven keystones (really, they had only needed six, but seven was more magically stable, Flitwick reminded them, redirecting any questions there towards Professor Vector) which controlled the magical abilities of the entire castle. They were hidden, buried deep, so that no one could tamper with them; indeed, they moved about, and if the rooms in Hogwarts had a tendency to shift position too, that was more an unforeseen side-effect of this thanks to the Transitive Charm than a planned feature.

Without the keystones and the magic they carried, Hogwarts would fall apart — and it was to illustrate just to what extent that he had brought them to this classroom. As the class reached its end, the small scholar beckoned them to the windows… where they realized that the classroom was inside a turret which _floated_ a few feet above the tiled roof of the Hospital Wing, with nothing connecting it to the main building but one single, solitary thread of silver. (Several students gave the door through which they had entered wary looks.)

Hermione thought this was all very interesting.

And it gave her a lot of ideas.

"Hermione —" Ron nudged her on their way out, "please, in the name of peace and sanity… whatever you're planning… don't do it."

"How could you tell?"

"Hermione, have you seen what your _face_ looks like when you start _thinking_?"

She gave a good-natured sigh.

The still-bandaged Harry, on the other hand, shuffled past with a groan. She held him back by the shoulder.

"Harry?"

"Mmyeah?" he moaned, his voice dripping with the unfathomable depth of his lack of interest in the conversation.

"I don't believe I'm mistaken in saying," she told him, "that you know the Castle best out of the lot of us."

"Hmhmmh."

"And I know," she went on, "that you spend most of your free time in the weekends roaming around under the Cloak. So next time you do this, I'd like you to have a look around for anything that might lead to the Keystones. It's useful information to have around."

"Hmmh."

"Oh," she added as an afterthought, "also see if you meet any Voldemort on the way. How do you _lose_ a silver monkey and a terracotta warrior, I ask you!?…"

 _That_ seemed to pique Harry's interest.

"Voldemort…" he startled her by enunciating, in an odd tone. "Looking for Voldemort?… you… shouldn't, I … mustn't…"

"What?"

Biting his lip, the boy readjusted his bandage.

"I mustn't waste my time," he hastily finished, "or yours. I… you'll probably never find uh-him. Them. Whatever."

"Hm, maybe not," she admitted — in truth, she didn't really believe that, but if agreeing was what it took to get Harry to keep talking, so be it. "They are a wily one. He is several wily… this is confusing. …Splitting one's soul isn't just against the laws of nature and magic, it should be against the laws of _grammar!_ Don't you think?"

"You… you shouldn't speak of H- of these that way," said Harry, and he looked almost scared.

"Harry, we've been joking about how Sir Tom is a gaudy turban since First Year. _Now_ is certainly not the time to go all-out on the 'fear him' thing."

She thought that was a well-made argument, which should have won her friend over.

But only a groan answered.

They walked silently to their next class, just a few feet between them, yet worlds apart.

* * *

On Saturday, Harry missed his Occlumency lessons again, and she had another talk with Dumbledore — a peaceful one, about her work on interlocking enchantments for the Babblebook. The Headmaster's insight was, as always, invaluable; and as always she surprised him with a bit of out-of-the-box thinking that shed knew light on the dusty theories of parchment enchantment.

Then there was another week, with other letters. Then another Saturday, another talk — grimmer — the Crimson Heir's had attacked the Crouch family home. Nearly dead, Barty Crouch Senior had only escaped to end up in long-term care in Saint-Mungo's. Albus warned her that an Order Meeting would take place the next day.

Then it was Sunday.

She spent the morning working on the Babblebook, confident in the knowledge that the meeting would only take place at two in the afternoon,

At a quarter past one, she had completed almost all of the enchantment. Now only a few surface charms to allow the various other spells to better interact with each other — she raised her wand —

— aaand there was a frantic House-Elf standing on her desk.

"Quicky, quicky, fast-fast-help! Mistress Hermione Granger is being required! Help-help!"

She resisted the urge to twirl her wand into a very nasty jinx, and set her mind to trying to recognize the noisy little thing. She had seen him somewhere, she thought… ah. Pompy. The Fudges' well-named butler, that was it.

Alright, so it wasn't his fault that he had interrupted her at a crucial moment.

" _Gnnngh._ { _Stupid little—_ }"

Nor was it, if she was being honest, his fault that she found House-Elves' broken grammar and shrill voices profoundly obnoxious. In fact, she wouldn't be nearly so annoyed if not for the circumstances.

The circumstances being that the panicked little being was stomping on her masterwork.

"Pompy," she greeted. "I appreciate that there must be some sort of emergency, but please, _stand still_ for a minute."

The Elf froze.

" _Off_ the book."

Pompy stood there for a moment, clearly considering how best to obey this new directive while remaining faithful to the earlier, 'stand still' part. In the end he disapparated from his position to one just a foot to the right — which was actually pretty impressive.

"Huh. Alright," she said. "If you've calmed down, you may speak. But _quietly_ , please."

"Mistress Hermione Granger!…" said the Elf. "It is being a terrible tragedy! You is must help Pompy and the Glorious Fudge Household!"

"Yes, yes, of course," she said, "but what exactly _is_ the tragedy?"

" _It is being an unhappy calamity of badness!_ " wailed the stout elf. "Awful and unfortunate and sad-sad-sad-sad- _sad-_ "

She had a sinking feeling she would not get much more out of him than that.

"…Very well then," she ordered, "take me to someone more coherent, please. Someone in the know. Say… Senior Undersecretary Slughorn?"

Pompy nodded, grabbed her hand with his own tiny, gloved digits, and, without ceasing his litany of _sad_ s, he _POP-_ ped her into the office of Horace Slughorn. It was, much as she expected, all green upholstery and comfy chairs and expensive-looking trinkets and richly-framed photographs.

The old walrus of a wizard looked about as desperate as the Elf; mustache aside, the one rather looked like an enlarged version of the other. For one terrible moment, Hermione wondered if she hadn't made a terrible mistake. Fortunately however, Slughorn pulled himself together like a decent grown-up; he adjusted his tie and walked to her.

"Ah… Miss Granger, so glad you came, so very nice — terrible crisis — I trust you know the facts of the case?"

"I don't," she said flatly.

Slughorn stared for a moment until he realized that was all she was going to say.

"…Ah," he sighed. "Well. The truth is, plain and simple… the truth is…"

He leaned in closer.

" _We've lost the Minister_."

Hermione took a sharp breath.

"…Oh dear. How did it happen? Was it an assassin? Did—"

"Oh, no, no," Slughorn corrected her, "I don't mean that as a euphemism. It… it's, ah… hem… we've… misplaced him. We don't know where he has gone, poor fellow. Very concerning."

"Are you sure he didn't run away from home?" Hermione suggested, mild.

(Cornelius Fudge was such a child in most other ways that she really didn't think it was that far-fetched.)

"Ah… well, I _did_ consider it…" Fudge replied, and just for that her opinion of him increased just a little bit, "…but I don't think it likely — after all, you see, he left his bowler behind."

"Oh? Where?"

"In his office. At the Ministry."

"Huh."

"Yes. Quite. That is what I said when I came in and first took in the… sight."

"Cornelius, without the bowler. The bowler, without Cornelius," Hermione muttered, bemused. "It's… huh. It's so hard to imagine those two apart. It's like trying to think of Fred or George Weasley as a single individual apiece. Or separating Crab and Boil. I… I don't think I can do it."

They both stared into the void for a few more instants, contemplating the sheer absurdity of the concept.

"Yes, yes, my thoughts exactly," Slughorn said, breaking the silence.

"So," Hermione said, getting down to business. " _What_ do we _do?_ "

"Yes, that _is_ the question, isn't it," mused Slughorn. "I mean, _I_ certainly don't want to be Minister, even acting. Much too involved for me. I'm already bending my principles working _this_ job… Minister, it's much too involved. No, no, no."

"Before you ask," Hermione compounded, "I'd love to be Minister someday, but right now, have you seen my schedule?"

"I think we've established that my esteemed predecessor Madam Umbridge's proper place is not so high in the hierarchy… As for Department Heads, well… I suppose Mr Cresswell is —"

"—out of the question," she cut him off. "The Goblins keep pulling the wool over his eyes in the Goblins Liaison Office over and over. In the last few years _krœzvüll_ has become synonymous with 'gullible' in Gobbledegook."

" _Really_?" chuckled Slughorn. "Who told you that?"

"The Goblin King," she said. "Well, _wrote_ me, to be more accurate."

Slughorn's mustache twitched in amusement.

"How can this — Miss Granger, no Goblin would share this information with a witch, let alone the K—"

"Ah, but you see, to him, I'm _not_ a witch," she explained. "I'm a violin."

She got a vacant look.

"…Long story. Anyway. Mr Cresswell's no good. Mr Crouch is out of commission. Madam Bones… isn't what we need. Forceful woman, bellicose disposition, I hear… things are too tense with Albania to risk it. Arthur Weasley is the opposite — he's much too soft. Besides, he's needed where he is now. Hmm…"

They went on for over ten minutes, bouncing useless names of Ministry workers off of each other. Even Dumbledore's name was called up, then shut down.

"…Alright," she concluded, "that seals it. There's only one wizard in Britain who wants the job _and_ would be halfway-decent at it."

She grinned and whispered:

"Percy… destiny awaits."


	63. The Children of Athena

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _The plot thickens! And so do the bottoms of quite a few cauldrons. By law. Oh, appointed Percy might have been one of the greatest mistakes Hermione made in this story… On the other hand, making the 'Babblebook' may well have been one of her best decisions!… Alright now, just my customary thanks to all my readers, favvers, followers, and reviewers, and my urge for more to review, and… we're off!_

 **Chapter LX: _The Children of Athena_**

"Grandmaster George? Grandmaster Fred?"

She heard murmuring as the Twins conferred, and Fred finally emerged out of the room.

"Why, if it isn't our very own Lady Macbrains!" he greeted. "One would have thought you had forgotten your Marauding status, looking at in how long we haven't seen you in official capacity…"

"Ah, but that's just the thing," Hermione answered, sly. "I've been busy lulling you into a false sense of security."

Fred's smile froze.

"What?" he uttered through his clenched smile.

Hermione slowly withdrew the day's copy of the _Daily Prophet_ and then pointed at the headline.

 _PERCIVAL WEASLEY APPOINTED MINISTER FOR MAGIC_

When she looked up, Fred had stumbled a few paces closer and was covering his face with his hands, shaking.

" _Hermione_!" he cried out. " _You've doomed us all!_ "

He then wiped away his false tears and regained his customary smile.

"…pfahahahAHAHAHAHAH!" he laughed. "Good one, Macbrains! Just wait until George sees this — what a forgery! Let me guess, you used the _Other Paper_ 's printing presses? Or blackmailed Rita Skeeter? Or—"

"What forgery?"

"What?"

"…oh," she understood. "Oh! You think — no, no, Merlin no. I didn't make this. That's the real issue of the real _Prophet_."

" _What_?"

"I really made the real Percy into the real Minister for Magic. For real. _That's_ the prank."

"WHAT?" he grabbed her tie. " _HERMIONE! YOU'VE DOOMED US ALL!_ "

* * *

Despite the Twins' drama, the world did _not_ end because of Percy Ignatius Weasley's leadership. Settling in the Acting Minister's Office with legendary speed, he performed the paperwork with his usual diligence, and asking for less of her advice than Cornelius Fudge on his best days.

Percy wasted no time in fulfilling his dream, issuing a Ministerial Decree that strictly regulated the thickness of cauldron bottoms within his first two days as Minister.)

Content in the peace of mind that Percy would not do anything rasher than cauldron bottoms, Hermione furthered her schooling and her side-projects — the foremost being, of course, the Babblebook. She liked to work in the Common Room, with Tsh by her side, reading one of his romance novels, and Minerva doing the same inside her frame on the nearest wall. Ron and Harry would usually be playing chess in the corner, and for as long as Harry continued to mope about with his dark attitude and his stupid forehead-bandage, that picture couldn't _quite_ be complete, but this was easily ignored, and she carried on with her work. And finally, a week into the rule of Percy, she felt ready to unveil her creation.

{ _Tsh_?} she hissed.

Tsh didn't budge.

{ _Tsh!_ } she called again, nudging the grass snake's side.

{ _SsSsssuhwhatisit?…_ } he groaned. { _What? Hermione Granger, I am busy! Grave things are at hand._ }

{… _Oh? What?_ } she asked with a smile, while gently tapping her book with her wand.

{ _I must know_ ,} answered the bookworm-snake. { _How will Rochester be wedded with Jane, when he has another spouse in his nest? It is a very dramatic event. Oh, I do not know what I would do, if, if I had a female-friend, she had another, mind-sick mate with her. I really do not._ }

{ _Ahah! Jane Eyre! A very good choice of reading, Tsh,_ } she complimented. { _However, I think you will find it very interesting to read a page from_ _my_ _book. Here, read it aloud, translate it to Parseltongue._ }

Tsh crept closer to the open book, squinted at the large letters, and began:

{ _I… must… know… how… is…Rochester…_ } He gasped. { _Another hero named Rochester?_ }

{ _Perhaps,_ } she winked. { _Go on._ }

{… _Going to… be with… huh, Jane!… even though he has another…_ } Tsh stopped again. His jaw dropped. { _Those are my words!… Hermione Granger, it worked!_ }

"Indeed it has!" Hermione enunciated, tapping another symbol on the cover of the Babblebook with her wand. "Eureka!"

And on the page, appeared a series of lines and dot. Parselscript for { _That is true! Victory!_ }.

Tsh read this too and his mouth opened even wider, as if he were about to swallow the mighty King of All Tadpoles.

{ _Alright then,_ } she said to herself. "It works for Parseltongue and English. That leaves, oh, a few hundreds to test…"

* * *

Over the next week, she was able to complete the rest of her testing. This was helped by what little homework she happened to have that week, and, if she was being honest, the fact that the lack of Harry freed up a lot of time — the one silver lining to her friend's continued mutism.

As for Minister Percy, all the speeches he made and decrees he passed still tended to have to do with cauldron regulations more than anything else. His obsession with cauldron-thickness had gotten to a nearly worrying level, to the point that she had Floo-called him briefly to make sure he didn't forget the _rest_ of what running a country involve. But Percy had reassured her that he was just handling the cauldron-thickness question once and for all and that the more important issue of Crouch Jr. was right next on his to-do list. Thus she returned to her work with renewed peace of mind.

In truth, most of the testing was done by Professors Dumbledore and Grindelwald, who, combined, knew about as many languages as Barty Crouch Sr. Ron provided a few words of Gobbledegook he'd picked up from Bill, and she herself handled French, Latin and German, besides Parseltongue. Professor Babbling's teaching also allowed her to check the Ancient Runes mode.

Then, finally:

"To the Owlery!"

* * *

Unfortunately, the Owlery was a rather smelly place, despite the best efforts of Filch and the designated House-Elves — as not all Owls were as splendidly clean as Hedwig. Still, she didn't mind it too much (she'd known many a snake whose preferred dwelling was a heap of decomposing compost).

"Alright, all of you," she called out.

In answer, feathered heads swiveled, the chattering ceasing. She was recognized even here… or perhaps it was just uncommon for a human — a student — to speak to the entire Owlery at once.

"Today is a big day for Owlkind and Wizardkind," she spoke. "I know that for generations, you have understood us, while we could not hear your answers — too few of us caring enough to so much as try."

Some owls gave short yips and meows in answer, voicing their thoughts. A big bully of a barn owl screeched, only to be silenced by a yip from Hedwig, who was perched not far from him, high up in the rafters.

"But no more!" she went on. "You see here my creation, the Babblebook. It is an artifact, which ill take down your words in writing, and translate it into any language at all — human, snake, goblin, anything. …Now, this is only the prototype, but it will be more than enough to begin a conversation, a conversation that should have been had centuries ago. An ambassador! I must have an ambassador. Who will speak for the Post Owls of Britain?"

The owls once again broke out in talks. Hedwig jumped up and down, flapping her wings angrily, but in the end another Owl, this one old and gray, his beak worn and his feathers brittle, supplanted her and flew down to the ground at Hermione's feet. He gave the Babblebook a curious look and hooted a phrase.

 _Fine then, let's see,_ read the translation.

He read it and looked visibly startled.

"Yes, it really does work," Hermione commented, both for him and for herself.

 _Startling_ , said the Owl through the book. _You have done good, Hermione Granger. The Children of Athena are thankful_.

"'Children of Athena'?" she repeated. "Is this what your people calls itself?"

 _It is indeed_ , the Owl replied. _It was the sorceress Pallas Athena who, in ancient times, took us from the forests of Greece, gave us our magic and our purpose. Without her we would be but beasts, as our kin in the Muggle world. We are forever thankful to her legacy._

That was the second time the owl used the word 'thankful', Hermione noticed. Either there was a glitch in the Babblebook, or Post Owls placed great value on thankfulness.

 _Beg! Beg!_ meant the yeps of a different owl, the brawny barn owl from earlier, as he interrupted — and Hermione guessed that he'd meant 'Pardon me', and the phrase in Owlish technically signifed 'Beg', and she'd have to tinker with that part of the Babblebook some more.

But first, finish that conversation.

"What is it?" she asked the interloper. "You're not the chosen ambassador! This is a historical event, so _please_ don't interfere unless you've got something _very_ interesting to say."

 _Renaldus is an old fool_ , the owl rebuffed her. _He was chosen for his age and so-named wisdom, but he does not speak for all of us. I won't have it._

Renaldus snapped his beak at the brown owl in disapproval:

 _Scouthibou! This isn't your place!_

 _I think it is, old one,_ said Scouthibou, before turning back to Hermione. _Now you listen, human girl. Athena did not make us. It's a lie. We are your equals, to you apes, we became what you are like you became what you are. Don't mistake us for your slaves._

Hermione started at these words.

"Oh God."

 _Don't listen to that mad one, young miss_ , Renaldus intervened. _He and his followers are extremists of the worst sort. There is every reason to believe that the old stories are true, and Pallas—_

"Pardon me, Sir… Renaldus?…" she interrupted, "but that's not the point. I hadn't even thought… oh, Merlin's scrolls… if you truly are a sentient people, not just Hedwig, but all of you Post Owls… you really are slaves, aren't you? No better off than the House-Elves — worse, because if they're brave they can at least voice their suffering —"

 _Worse off than the Elves?_ repeated Renaldus. _Oh, I don't think so — except in Hogwarts, but that is because the Elves are well-treated here. No, we are quite happy with our fate. Somehow, wizards have always respected Owls more than they do Elves… even though, or, perhaps, because they do not hear what we have to say._

"Oh… well, I'm glad," she told the old owl, "but it's still not right, that you're _owned_ and _sold_ like this… it's not right. Any more than it's right for Elves or Serpents, or than it was for humans."

 _Why_? Renaldus asked her, though he was also addressing the entire Owlery with that improvised speech. _It's the order of things. It has been since out inception. Wizards beckon, and we oblige. You have seen the Elves, and their tragedy, and you think we are the same, but we are different, because the Elves, they were not born like this. They were free once, before the rise of wizardkind. Us, it is our nature to carry the messages of men, just as Gargoyles guard, and Centaurs gallop, and the Stars shine and guide._

 _And there were time, know this, human girl, there were times, when some of us Owls rebelled against out masters. When the balance of all things was disturbed. Scouthibou's faction are only the last heirs of a long and dark tradition. Centuries ago… some Owls, many Owls, wished to take over the land from the humans, magical and not. But it was not their place. The Muggles, the very Muggles, were stronger as a matter of fact. One by one the rebels were hunted down, caught, and executed — we found them nailed to farmhouse doors._

"That's… horrible," Hermione gasped.

She'd known about the medieval practice of nailing owls to barn-doors — vaguely, in her childhood. She'd never really thought about it again, and if anything, she was alright with it at the time, since some owls hunted snakes, and she had as yet no inkling that _those_ owls were thinking, feeling beings. But now—

 _No. It was harsh,_ said Renaldus, _but it was right_.

 _It was **not**!_ shrieked Scouthibou. _They were **martyrs** of our cause. You should be **ashamed** of yourself… ashamed!_

With surprising majesty, Renaldus suddenly took flight, swooping higher and higher till he was in the very center of the Owlery, and his screech was deep, booming, commanding:

 _THAT IS QUITE ENOUGH! I am the Guide of the Hogwarts Owl, you hear? Down, and not a word from you, before our visitor has gone._

"Oh, I won't stay long," said Hermione. "If there is anything more that you have to say, anything urgent, any of you can come to me. You know where to find me… obviously. Your kind always do. Heh."

Renaldus stared at her intently, and shook his head ever so slightly to the right, an Owl's only way of nodding.

Before she'd quite left, she heard a few more hoots, which she didn't think came from either Renaldus or Scouthibou. She opened the Babblebook again, and found that despite the distance, the book had heard and translated. (Oh, she was proud of that thing.)

 _Out of curiosity… who do you think is right?_

She smiled and said without turning back:

"Neither of you."

* * *

She returned to the Common Room with her head spinning, and pondered the Owl question at length. It was a little like the Elf problem, and it was a little like the Snake problem, yet it was really like neither. The Owls had a lower status than the Elves, obviously, but that had given them more freedom of mind, and they made liberal use of it. There was no brainwashing to undo — only very conservative opinions. And on the opposite side, a specist maniac clearly no more rational than a Grindelwald follower.

Huh. Come to think of it, _had_ Professor Grindelwald recruited any renegade Children of Athena, among the many disgruntled creatures he had taken into his army, back in the 1930's and 1940's? It was possible.

She asked him next lesson, and learned that he had not — though he knew his own Owl from those days, Alzarius, had been no mere servant but loyal to his cause. At the time Grindelwald had felt little more than scorn for Alzarius, too envious of Albus Dumbledore's Phoenix, something he had come to regret while in Nurmengard.

He'd come to regret a lot of things while in Nurmengard.

Speaking of which, she had a continued suspicion that one of those things was that he had never asked for Professor Dumbledore's hand in marriage when he had the chance. This was a theory shared by Minerva, though in fairness, it was in Minerva's nature for stories of tragic love to resonate very strongly with her, as a Portrait whose purpose had been to be a vessel for the original Minerva's sorrow following her beloved's untimely death.

She hadn't dared broach the subject with Albus himself yet.

(If Grindelwald somehow stayed a second year as Hogwarts's Defence Professor — and Hermione hoped that never technically being on the school grounds would allow him to bypass the Curse — she had a half-baked plan to covertly set him up with Albus on Valentine's Day, and see what would happen.)

* * *

During her next round of letter-writing, Hermione wrote to _Challenges in Charming_ , asking if they would be interested to do a feature on the Babblebook in a future issue of the journal. She received an affirmative answer, but, oddly, she received it three days later than the time the journal promised. The letter came with an apologetic note, according to which the entire staff of _Challenges in Charming_ had been forced to work overtime on a special edition mandated by the Ministry.

Having gotten no word about this, and still not used to the Ministry doing anything important without her input, she immediately wrote back to ask what, exactly, the special issue would be about.

The answer was quick and made up of two words.

' _Cauldron thickness._ '

"Oh, Percy, Percy, Percy…"

Thus she wrote to Percy, asking him why the hell he was still working on that easy little 'cauldron bottom' problem weeks later, even though the more pressing issue of the Crouch case was supposed to be right up next. Though they had done nothing major, the Death Eaters of the Crimson Heir had committed a couple of raids in the country since Percy's government had last promised to settle the matter.

Percy's answer was that he was still just solving that small cauldron thickness problem, but he wanted to do the job properly, and there had been a bit of opposition, and he'd begin work on the Crouch business right after that.

To be fair, no reign is without cloud, and the innocuous decree from earlier had indeed ruffled some feathers. (Some metaphorical feathers. Hermione would have to watch her tongue from now on, as she became aware that the phrase might be offensive to Owls.) The Diagon Alley Cauldron Users' Voluntary Association had rebelled, refusing to thicken their perfectly serviceable pots.

In the next few weeks, Hermione paid more attention to the news in the _Prophet_ and _Other Paper_ , which, in turn, paid more and more attention to the Cauldron Thickness Business.

Things got violent as the Shadow Republic of the Hopping Pots (something Hermione really wished she had found out about _earlier_ , an organization which acted as the government of the sentient cauldrons in the British Isles) sided with the Ministry against the D.A.C.U.V.A., as their average thickness was, in fact, _superior_ to that of ordinary cauldrons.

A riot broke out in the Potion Shoppe of Knockturn Alley in early June, followed by a brawl on the 21st which involved an Auror — Celestina Withecombe-Greengrass.

And at that point, Percy got serious.

* * *

"A thousand new recruits! He's raving mad!" Jester G. White voiced his opinion, almost as soon as he was seated at the Order's meeting table. " _Fudge_ had more sense than that!"

"Er, Jester?" Hermione corrected. "He really didn't. It's just that whenever he did something like that I'd _stop_ him _."_

 _"_ Pardon me?" said Dumbledore as he came in. "I apologize for my belated arrival, but — if my ears do not deceive me — Jester, my boy, why on Earth are you opposed to young Minister Weasley's proposal? Surely you realize that with the Death Eaters of Bartemius Crouch at large, the D.M.L.E. needs all the wands it can—"

"D.M.L.E.? Who said anything about the D.M.L.E.?!" Hermione cut him off. "Percy is forming his own armed force of _Cauldron thickness inspectors!_ "


	64. The Cauldron Professor

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Just a head's up, folks, we are reaching the end of Year Four; I expect that the next chapter will be the Finale. Be warned, it's a doozy, so I hope you've followed the ravings I call plot points closely. In the meantime, let me ask once again for reviews, thank those who have already showed support, and introduce you to…_

 **Chapter LXI: _The Cauldron Professor_**

"I don't understand… I don't understand this!…" lamented Molly Weasley. "He used to be such a sweet boy…"

"Now, dear, there's no reason to think that's changed," her husband tried to reassure her. "He just… bit off more than he can chew with this gig, I suppose. You know how he's always been with cauldron bottoms…"

"But it was never this bad!…" wailed Molly.

"I'm sorry, Molly, but are you implying this is a recurring thing?" asked Professor Dumbledore. "If so, this is precisely the sort of insight we seek."

"The sort I invited you to Hogwarts to get," said Hermione.

The portrait or Professor Vulpus sniffed loudly.

"Ugh, fine," she amended, "the sort of insight I _suggested_ that _Professor Dumbledore_ invite you to get."

"Well, yes," said Mrs Weasley, "ever since he had an accident with a collapsible cauldron, when he was five, he's been very particular about cauldrons… but it was only ever a little quirk of his, you know?… I never thought it would come to _this_."

"I say, Dumbledore, what does this device do?" interjected Mr Weasley.

Dumbledore, without taking his eyes off Mrs Weasley, began:

"Oh, Arthur, I have a great many instruments in here, many of which are not of my own making; I honestly could not say what most of—"

Having finally glanced at the item in Mr Weasley's hands, Dumbledore shifted tracks.

"Arthur, this is a Muggle ballpoint pen," he said. "A birthday present from Hermione. Incidentally, thank you again, my dear, for a most useful and practical gift."

"It's… it's not enchanted, is it?…" Arthur ensured.

"No, don't worry."

"…So then," Hermione returned to the topic, "it is far from a whim of Percy's to have fixated on cauldron bottoms, but nothing in his earlier behavior suggested he'd get such a pathological obsession with them. And he continues to deny that he has one."

"That is correct."

"You _have_ tried to reason with him, Mrs Weasley?"

"And tried scolding, too," she related. "But he won't budge."

" _Merlin's pants!_ " Hermione vented. "Doesn't he realize he is endangering the entire Wizarding World with this nonsense? It's not just that he's neglecting the Death Eaters and, really, all his other duties. If he keeps on like this the I.C.W. won't ever take us seriously again!"

"I concur," Dumbledore weighed in. "And I'm the _Supreme Mugwump_."

"I'm sorry, Dumbledore, Hermione…" said a dejected Arthur Weasley. "It's out of our hands."

Before they could reply, a _POOF_ ing sound came from the chimney.

"That… would be the emergency floo-line to the Minister's office that you haven't closed yet, Albus" Hermione commented.

"Quite," muttered the Headmaster as a wizard and a witch emerged from the chimney.

The first was a brutish-looking man, though neither wide nor tall, who had long and dirty hair and disparate clothing. His chin was rough with stubble that just couldn't manage to be a proper beard, and, for inexplicable reasons, his eye-sockets were coated with sloppily-applied black eyeliner.

The second, to her horror, was the pink monstrosity known as Dolores Umbridge, former Senior Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic and endless giver of bad advice to Cornelius until she'd quietly demoted her away. And she was _smiling_.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" said Dumbledore, his voice harsh.

"Yes, I'd quite like to know that, too," Hermione concurred with at least as much authority.

" _Who are you?_ " added Arthur Weasley.

"No one's _intrusing_ , old man," the wizard said, looking at Dumbledore. "The name's Drake Scabior, and those here're my credentials."

He handed the Headmaster a piece of official-looking parchment with an orange seal.

Dumbledore took it and read it over, his pale eyes widening.

"…Well? What does it _say_?" said the Portrait of Armando Dippet. "Come now, Dumbledore, don't keep us waiting!"

"It _says_ , my _fictional friend_ , that I am a Cauldron Inspector Squad Leader, and that from this day forthwards—"

"If you hear any unbearable scraping," Hermione commented, "that would be me, gnashing my teeth at your _appalling_ attempt at vocabulary."

"—from _today forthwards_ ," Scabior continued, shooting her a dark look, "my friend Dolores here is going t'be stayin' round here, keeping an eye on things."

"By 'things', we should, of course, understand 'cauldron bottoms,'" the Sorting Hat guessed. "My God, how far we've fallen."

"Heh-hem!" Umbridge said. "Not just that, _Hat._ Cauldron bottoms are, of course, the central issue—"

"No, the central issue is the Death Eaters," said Hermione.

"—but I am also here to verify that the Hogwarts staff are not disrupting morale in these difficult times. We couldn't have some _uppity girl_ , or… who knows what, spreading _slander_ about our beloved Minister."

Hermione looked at Umbridge for a moment, then mentally struck off 'secretly in love with Cornelius Fudge' from her list of possible explanations for why Umbridge was always so… Umbridge. Clearly, the Minister could have been Captain Blackbeard and she wouldn't have cared a bit.

"So what will your title be?" she asked, business-like. "Grand Inquisitor? Snooper-in-chief? The Great Hogwarts Contrafibulator?"

"We considered it," Umbridge answered, not losing her cool. "But no. I shall be the Cauldron Thickness Professor."

"…The what?"

"The Profess of Cauldron Thickness," she explained. "The one who teaches children about the thickness of cauldrons and why it's important. Hm-hm."

"THE _WHAT_?!"

* * *

"Now, children, _this_ object. I am going to be talking about this object. Hem-hem. Can anyone tell me what it's called?"

"…Perhaps it's a Y.B.H.T.N.Y.F.B.I.A.G.T.C.Y?"

Umbridge gave her a blank look.

"Oh, sorry, that stands for _You Better Hold This Near Your Face Because I Am Going To Curse You._ Wasn't that clear?"

The Cauldron Thickness Professor bit her lip and forced herself to keep her obnoxious smile plastered on her face:

"Miss. _Granger._ I see that you are… fond of acronyms. May I suggest… C. T.… M. O… T.… F.D.…?…"

(She was rather bad at this. Umbridge was fast coming down as her least-favorite Ilpoat, ever.)

"What does _that_ mean?" she answered. "Can Together Make Out Together For Development?"

Another good save from Umbridge, but that smile would _have_ to crack _eventually_.

"Now you listen closely, dear. You will _c_ ome _to my office tonight for detention!_ "

"Oooh, so _that_ 's what it meant! Alright."

* * *

"Sniffle… sniffle… booh…"

"Oh, do stop. I'm not here because of you, you know. I'm waiting for someone."

"Booh… hoohooh… sniffle…"

"This is getting ridiculous. What _is_ the matter with you?"

"Hee… booh… sniffle…"

Prim footsteps rang on the marble floor of the corridor.

"Ah, I think this would be her," Hermione said aloud. "Good night, Myrtle, and thank you for a most interesting conversation, is what I'm not going to say to you, ever."

" _Granger!_ " shouted Umbridge as she ran the rest of the way to her own position. " _What_ are you doing in front of the _girls' bathrooms_?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Professor, I must have misheard," she said. "I thought you had told me to come to your office tonight?"

…

How was she _doing_ that with her _smile_. Had she used a Petrifying Charm on her mouth, or something?

* * *

"Miss Granger…" Umbridge said once she had guided her to her office, which the horrid woman had already charmed an equally-horrid pink, and she said it through the clenched teeth of her frozen grin, "…I… lines. An hour. Hem-hem."

With a groan, as her annoyance surpassed her amusement, Hermione took the offered black quill and started copying down the phrase Umbridge had indicated: ' _I will not insult my betters_.'

She was three lines in when she noticed that Umbridge was staring at her very, very strangely.

"You're… writing in… glowing blue ink," she gasped.

"…Yes, I suppose I am," she agreed, without stopping. "I suppose it does clash with your interior decoration, Professor, but this _is_ your Quill. I'm not responsible for your bad taste in equipment."

"But that's not supposed to… that's not… it's actually…" she spluttered, before jumping from behind her desk. "Show me your wrist!…"

"My…?"

Without asking for her permission, Dolores Umbridge rolled up her sleeve to reveal her bare pink wrist.

" _What?!_ "

"Er… Professor… I'd say sorry, except you're you… what's the matter, exactly?"

"Your wrist should be _bleeding!_ "

"…Er…" she said, "you say 'should'… for _whose_ convenience, exactly?"

"No, no, that's not — my quill, it is a rather _special_ invention of mine, to make sure the lesson _sinks_ _in_ , you see — it's supposed to make you write in your own blog, cutting you in the process — I was really very proud of it —"

"Oh, then I suppose it worked perfectly," she said.

"No it didn't."

"Yes it did," she insisted. "My blood is blue, and it glows. Why do you think my skin is this color? As for my wrist, the blue blood also has healing powers."

" _What?!_ "

* * *

"Hat, I need your help. Your Turban side's help, actually."

"Yes?" said the Sorting Hat. "Anything to help. And I do think I have stabilized enough for this sort of thing."

"The Curse on the Defence Professorship."

"Yes? If you're thinking of lifting it," the Hat explained, "I'm afraid Albus already asked and the only way would be for the one who cast it to reverse it, or die. The other Horcruxes you have ensnared are too dangerous to be given wands, and as for me, I can't exactly use one, myself… besides, I'm not even sure I am enough of a Voldemort for it to work."

"Phooey," she said. "But then, although this is all very interesting, that's not what I'm asking. I would like to know how to put a similar curse on another Professorship."

"…"

"The Cauldron Thickness Professorship."

And the Sorting Hat _grinned_.

(Probably his Voldemort and Slytherin parts bleeding through.)

* * *

If there was one thing that made Hermione reconsider cursing Umbridge's Professorship into oblivion, it was Potions Class. Snape might have improved immeasurably since his chat with the shade of Lily Potter, but that didn't mean it wasn't still extremely entertaining to see her two least-favorite teachers go to all-out war with one another. And they did. It began on the first Potions Class after Umbridge's arrival:

"And _what_ are you doing in my classroom?"

"I'm sorry, Mr Snape, I think you mean _my_ classroom."

"How _dare_ you!?"

"Hem-hem. How could a room containing so many cauldrons not fall within the dominion of the Cauldron Thickness Professor? Think a little."

And it continued week after week. Invariably, Umbridge would show up, and measure every cauldron twice before Snape could be allowed to begin. Invariably, Snape complained and snarked. Invariably, the entire thing was bloody hilarious.

* * *

What was less hilarious was that Harry, normally so prompt to laugh with her and Ron about Snape's antics, continued to sit in a corner, sulking. On a few occasions, he had even skipped classes. Maximilian had had to split himself in two and act both his part and Harry's, with a little help from Hermione's borrowed Time-Turner.

By early June, this got so bad that Hedwig herself sought out Hermione, nipping at her cloak and dragging her away from the Great Hall to a secluded place.

"Hedwig! I don't know what you're doing," she protested, "but I have classes! Cauldron class, to be fair, but still — I _am_ trying to leave Hogwarts with a flawless record —"

 _You have a Time-Turner,_ Hedwig pointed out, her words appearing on the Babblebook.

(Hermione had taken to wearing the Babblebook strapped around her waist like some sort of sporran, just in case she needed it. One of her better ideas.)

"That's a good point," she granted.

She looked around, and realized she had no idea where Hedwig had taken her. With how much Harry explored the Castle in his spare time, it stood to reason that he would have shown Hedwig a few of his findings. Wait…

"Say… you wouldn't happen to know where I could find the Hogwarts Keystones?"

Not _me, I'm afraid,_ the bird answered. _Renaldus might know, perhaps. But he would not tell you if he did. The Castle Lore is only for the Staff to know._

"I like to think I'm good as staff by now," huffed Hermione. "In truth, I can't imagine that I'm ever going to really leave this place. Can you?"

 _I'm… a long-flyer, a wanderer,_ Hedwig twittered, thoughtful. _A nest is nice to have, but I am not the type to dwell in it. I dream of traveling the world…_

"…With Harry?"

 _With my Harry, yes,_ she said. _That's the dream, at least. But I don't know if it's going to happen. You see, that's what I want to talk about._

"I thought it might be."

 _My Harry hasn't been himself, not for a long time_ , Hedwig elaborated. _It's like he's taking someone else's advice so much, he's becoming that person. Does that make sense? At first it was like he was acting, pretending. I like games, though I didn't much like that one. But the more time passes, the less it is an act. He's been forgetting to come feed me. And I say forgetting, but… but I'm not entirely sure it's not on purpose._

"That's horrible…" Hermione said, breathless.

 _It is,_ she opined, _and there is worse. To the smell — I don't know if you humans notice — his head… he smells like he is injured. Burnt. Bleeding. Underneath the cloth._

"Oh, so it's not just to look cool?" she was surprised to learn. "I thought he put on the bandages because he thought it made him look interesting… but you say…"

 _Please help him, Hermione Granger…_ wailed the owl.

"I will… I will try."

Operation Save Harry From Himself, engaged.

* * *

Hermione spent quite a bit of time looking for Professor Max around the Castle, though she knew this to mostly be a useless task. Still, Max had made a point to show himself to a few meals since his return to Azkaban — perhaps he meant to remind Dumbledore of his existence so that he might finally get a Ghoul Studies class working. She had meant to ask him if he knew of any dark magic that could have done something like what Hedwig described to Harry. She asked the Sorting Hat, who didn't know, and Grindelwald, who dared not say.

Finally, with a sinking feeling in her gut, she went for the Headmaster.

"Albus, I have something to ask you, and you are going to answer."

Albus looked up at her from the letter he was writing.

"Yes?" he said, not as genial as in his best moments. "I'm sorry, Hermione, but I am quite busy. The I.C.W. demands assurance that we have not become not a dictatorship, and I am doing my best to find a phrasing that will put their worries to rest, without specifically denying the charge. I would hate to go down in history as a liar."

"…Yes, no, I'm sure it's important," she fumbled her words, though without losing her determined look, "but so is this. Harry Potter."

"…Harry Potter," said Dumbledore, rubbing his beard thoughtfully. "Yes, I do think I know a boy by that name. Are you a friend of his?"

"Don't try to be witty, because I am not in the mood," she said harshly. "Something weird and dark is happening with Harry, it's been happening for months, and getting worse, and it has suddenly occurred to me that if you truly had no inkling of what was going on, even with Barty Crouch and Percy and everything, _you would have talked about it with me_ — but no, even when I saw you right after he missed his Occlumency class, you said a few vague words and then you changed the subjects. So. You have a theory. Tell it to me."

"Sometimes," Dumbledore said in a slow, wise-man voice, "it is preferable not to kn—"

Hermione slammed her hand on the desk.

"Albus, do not even _think_ about finishing that sentence."

Both held their breaths for a few seconds.

Then Dumbledore closed his eyes, adjusted his glasses, and talked.

* * *

"Harry is a _Horcrux_ , and you thought I _wouldn't want to know?!_ You can make a Horcrux out of a living thing and you thought I _wouldn't want to know?!_ "

"Well, it was an old suspicion, from you children's first year, and I thought, then, I thought that one day Harry would have to die, so that Voldemort could also… and in that light, it would have been such a terrible weight to put over your conscience. Then the Basilisk Petrified Tom, and I worried less, and I thought it irrelevant. It neatly explained the Parseltongue, and that was that."

"But clearly it wasn't so harmless, if it's starting to take him over like that!…" Hermione nearly shouted.

"There, I… wanted not to believe it," the old sorcerer confessed. "Because it means, if it is true, it means that even the best protections of Love are no match for the darkness of Voldemort's work. And that is something… something that was deeply upsetting to me. To believe that Dark Magic could so trump the oldest, most fundamental power of Good… all in all, I found it more… comfortable to go on thinking that Harry was merely going through the sort of adolescent rebellion that I know all too well."

"Blah, blah, more vague allusions to your time with Gellert which I already know about so drop it," she waved him off. "What's done is done, Albus, but now you follow me and let's try and talk some sense into that Horcrux."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to point out to him that he just _tried to possess my friend_. And that I am _me_."

* * *

Finding Harry was harder than expected. He was not in his Common Room, nor in the Library or Great Hall or anywhere where students would be expected. He was not in the showers. He was not even in the Astronomy Tower. They feared, for a moment, that he was hiding under the Cloak, but a brief search revealed that it was sitting in his trunk.

Then Hermione had a thought, and hissed a word, looking Dumbledore in the eye.

{ _Chamber._ }

* * *

They _did_ find the elusive Boy Who Lived in the Chamber of Secrets, pacing back and fourth, mouthing words without sound and rubbing at his forehead. Every so often a moan or peep would escape him.

"Harry…" Dumbledore said, kindly but powerful, the very picture of authority. "Come with us, please. We know what is happening to you. We hope that we can help."

Harry stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at the intruders.

" _Old man…_ " he said, his voice so sibilant Hermione took a moment to realize he was speaking English and not Parseltongue.

It was precisely the same voice that the Sorting Hat had lapsed into, when the Cup of Hufflepuff had threatened to overtake him.

"That's not Harry, that's the Turban!…" she cried.

" _Clever girl…_ " 'Harry' chuckled, his voice dry. " _Oh, fear not, I_ _am_ _Harry. But not just Harry, no longer_ _just_ _Harry. You see, we are as one now. The Dark Lord talked, the boy listened. The boy learns and listens and talks. I talk and I listen. You see, we are as one now._ "

"I don't believe you," Hermione said, flatly.

" _It's your funeral, stupid girl._ "

"Stupid? Me?" she smirked. "Oh, you don't have any _idea_ who you're dealing with."

" _Don't I?…_ " said Harrymort. " _But then, do you? Have you ever known either of us, really? Have you seen me at my peak? Hav…_ "

And as quickly as that, Harry's wand was in the hybrid's hand, pointed at Dumbledore, his last syllable became the first of another phrase entirely—"

"— _ada keda—_ "

The Killing Curse? God no — she had to do something —

"— _mfgrhrk!_ " choked Harrymort as a figure in black robes appeared behind him and wrapped an arm around his neck, cutting off his respiration.

Hermione suddenly gasped, her free hand shot up to clutch her Time-Turner, which was bruning-hot — this could only mean — were things that desperate? She closed her eyes, trying to minimize the damage.

Having wrestled his wand away from him, Future-Hermione kicked Harrymort to the ground and then ran away, without looking back.

As soon she was certain her other self had left the Chamber, Hermione opened her eyes and jumped at Harrymort. One foot weighing on his wand hand, she grabbed one end of the bandage wrapped around the boy's forehead.

"Alright then, Mister Turban, let's see what you're hiding _this_ time."

She pulled it off like a band-aid. Harry cried in pain and Voldemort echoed the scream with defiance and spite.

"…Oh my God…" Hermione murmured, and even Dumbledore recoiled at what they had unveiled.

Harry's curse-scar was no longer a small scar at all — it had expanded, opened into a gash that covered most of his forehead, angry red and bleeding. And the red was not just blood. In its approximate center, staring back at the two of them, was a pupil.


	65. Fourth Year Finale

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Extra-long chapter ahoy! Also, plot twists and things. Congratulations to all the reviewers who successfully guessed what was wrong with Harry. And yes, that image was kind of disturbing, I know, but I warned you long ago that just because the good guys are very funny and light-hearted, it doesn't mean the villains are going to be pulling their punches. (Not that that will save them from the side-effects of a happy ending and a shamefully overpowered protagonist possé, of course.) Thanks to all reviewers and otherwise-supporters, please enjoy, please review, here we go!:_

 **Chapter LXII: Fourth Year Finale**

"I don't understand… I don't understand this!…" This time it was Hermione talking. "No activity for that many years — Harry grows up into a perfectly decent person, into a wonderful person even — and then… and then…"

" _And then, little Parsel girl,_ " said the voice of Voldemort, " _and then, you did something very, very stupid._ "

"It happens to the best of us," Dumbledore remarked. "I have had my fair share… as have you, Tom."

" _There is no Tom here,_ " spat Voldemort. " _There is only me — and, perhaps, some leftover Harry… but if so, not for much longer._ "

"I don't believe that," Hermione said in defiance — yet she didn't feel so sure at all.

"Neither do I, Tom," the Headmaster agreed, "but let us not digress overmuch. You spoke of a mistake, one that allowed you to… creep through?"

"Go on, enlighten us," she prompted again. "We love a good story. I'm sure we can figure out the happy ending when we get to that point."

The Voldemort in the Scar _stared_ , unblinking. But his reply did come in the end, through Harry's stolen lips.

" _As I was saying, girl, you did something so, so very foolish. For a being such as myself it should have been child's play to possess the boy of any living creature, let alone weakling half-blood infant!… Only the magic of Lily Potter's sacrifice saved it, from that as well as from my Curse. Oh, it was old magic, deep, human magic — something I should have foreseen, perhaps. Only you see, girl, if what I know of you through Harry has taught me anything…"_

There was a dry _chuckle_ , an audible chuckle, all the more chilling in that it did not match up to the movement of Harry's lips.

"What?"

" _…it is,_ " Voldemort finished, delighting in his cleverness, " _that all magic, even the greatest and most powerful… has loopholes. Now let us see, Queen of Tricks, can you figure it out now?_ "

There were a few seconds of silence; ten. Twenty.

"Enough, Tom!" Dumbledore raged at last. "This game is as obscene as the rest of your existence! So tell us, and pray that this will be enough to earn our merc—"

"No, no, Albus," Hermione stopped him. "I actually do want to try and guess."

 _So_ , thought Hermione. _Facts of the case._

Lily Potter's Power of Love mumbo-jumbo protected the body of the infant Harry.

Scardemort had not destroyed this protection, he had merely bypassed it.

Scardemort had not taken Harry over to begin with — by his own admission, the parasitehad talked to him, gained his trust, tricked him.

Scardemort had said that his victory was owed to something Hermione had thought or done, to a 'mistake' that was hers.

Hermione closed her eyes, and thought. And when she opened them again she saw the red eye of Voldemort in Harry's gaping scar. That eye, blood-red, glowing, _burning_. The same burning blood-red that had taken the lives of the Dementors in Azkaban, of the Death Eater at the Frost Fair.

"The Fiendfyre."

It wasn't a question, not even a guess.

In that moment she _knew_. Dumbledore knew too, of course — that word was enough for him to understand.

Above Azkaban that day, Hermione had ordered the tamed Fiendfyre to obey the will of all of them — all present. To her, that meant Harry, and Ron, and Ginny, and herself. Little did she know that there was a fifth present. A hidden parasite whom she had gifted with an immortal body of cursed fire, one ordered to never harm him, to obey his every whim — one in the form of a snake, even.

Lord Voldemort cackled, and this time Hermione was certain — the dark laughter came from Harry's borrowed throat not at all, this time, but from the recesses of the inferno in his skull.

"That's how Harry trusted you," she guessed. "Listened to you long enough for you to possess him. He thought you were a new being, he thought you _were_ the Fiendfyre, and because of the orders the Fiendfyre would have _had_ to obey him and have his best interests in mind. …You clever, clever monster."

" _I shall take that as a compliment, Parsel-girl._ "

"Take it however you like," Hermione answered, regaining some of her bravado. "You weren't clever enough. Not fast enough. You have lost."

" _Really? What can you_ _do_ _to me?_ " said Voldemort. " _This body isn't mine… it's that of your precious Boy Who Lived. We wouldn't want anything happening to it while he's… away_."

"Cursed bodies are no matter," said Hermione. "I should know. Or didn't you get _that_ part of Harry's memories? We have the Gaunt Ring, stupid, and I survived its curse through throwing away the old mortal coil and getting a new one. Don't think I couldn't do that for Harry."

" _Curses!_ " spat Voldemort (and oh God, he really had just said that).

"Now do all of us a favor and surrender peacefully," she ordered him. "You're vanquished, alright? We can even give you a more proper body than the others, as long as it's not one that can cast magic, of course. Just let Harry be until I can get Maximilian here, and don't try anything funny."

" _I…_ " Voldemort considered.

"Oh, and just to err on the side of caution, because you are a manipulative Slytherin terror, _Petrificus Totalus_."

Harry's body stiffened, his tormented face freezing.

Hermione and Dumbledore shared a relieved look.

Then they heard the chuckle. The laughter. Twisted and evil. Still coming from Harry's forehead, as surely as if his throat had been moving. The pupil in the scar was dilated in euphoria, and the blood-fire around it was bubbling and fuming, and then it _leaked out_. Before Hermione could react, the snake of fire that was Voldemort had reared its head up from within Harry's skull, as if the scar had been but a window into its nest.

{ _Fools! Fools, both of you, to think you have won! Harry Potter's body is not yet mine, I but inhabit it — my form is else, and unbound by your feeble curse!_ }

"And?" retorted Dumbledore, answering English to what was now clearly Parseltongue. "Forgive my impertinence, but it seems to me that whether you can escape from Mr Potter body is of little consequence. You are still in the furthest reaches of my domain, the Castle Hogwarts, with no wand and no followers."

{… _What he said_ ,} nodded Hermione, who had nothing to add but felt as though the two of them ought to present a united front.

{ _Oh, but you are cretins,_ } guffawed the snake that was fire that was Voldemort. { _Your domain? This Chamber? It is the Chamber of Secrets, and I am its Heir! Fool teacher, I came here of my own volition, does that not tell you something? Tell me, has either of you considered precisely why I retreated down here? No? Hah!_ }

Of a common accord, Hermione and Dumbledore took a few steps back and readied their wands. Whatever the Dark Lord was planning, it couldn't be good.

{ _As you have callously reminded me,_ } gloated the false serpent, { _I am without a true form, or a wand of my own, or my servants, but all that is easily remedied with enough cunning. There are two things you should know, my dear_ adversaries.}

{ _Go ahead,_ } goaded Hermione. { _I'm always happy to_ learn.}

{ _Yeth,_ } said Dumbledore, whose Parsel-lisp hadn't improved.

{ _First,_ } said Voldemort, { _about the Dark Mark. I cannot control it as I could in my own body… well, as the master self could, though that distinction has little relevance. I was split from him upon our common death; I have as much right to supremacy as he does, I should say._

 _I was saying… the Dark Mark does not obey me as it once did. But I am still its creator, and understand it in ways subtler even than Crouch… ah, Crouch is a powerful servant, but too ambitious. He will have to be taken care of. He has taken my servants to be his, stolen the power of my Mark. No more. You see, there is a way to key another into the network of the Mark, and to give him power over the others._

 _Alack, it requires willing flesh to cast the Mark upon — but you see — I had it right here._ }

Sweeping down, the snake of fire engulfed Harry's forearm. True to its old oath, the Fiendfyre did not harm Harry's flesh, but no promises had been made involving his clothes, and so this left the forearm bear — revealing a bright red, brand-new Dark Mark.

"You fiend!…" fumed Dumbledore.

(Hermione, for her part, _was_ a little upset for Harry, but the Mark was small fry compared to the rest of it… and it had the redeeming quality of being clever spellwork at least.)

{ _Even on a willing victim, the ritual is not painless… the younger sorts have been known to scream. That is the first reason why I dragged my vessel down to the Chamber today._ }

{ _And the second reason?_ } Hermione asked. { _Don't keep us waiting! I've got places to be… crackpot Dark Wizards to cage…_ }

{ _The second reason, girl,_ } hissed Voldemort, { _is that the Chamber… is not quite part of Hogwarts. Its enchantments are its own. They overlap with those of the Castle, but the key difference is, they are the Heir's to command. Not the Headmaster's. And the Anti-Disapparition Jinx may be ancient and solid, too solid to bypass entirely, but with my Dark Mark inside the castle as an anchor… I should be able…_ }

Hermione and Dumbledore both understood too late as the Serpent Voldemort retreated into Harry's skull.

"NO!"

From within, the Dark Mark on Harry's wrist glowed with evil power.

It didn't take long. Soon, with CRACKs and POPs, one Death Eater after another materialized in the Chamber of Secrets. Seventeen in all, all of Crouch's faithful — the Azkaban escapees and the few others he had driven to join him. It was hard to recognize them all, hidden as they were behind their ridiculous skull masks (cheap, papier-mâché things that would not have looked out-of-place in a carnival parade) — but, from the pointed lack of scarlet robes and insane raving, it seemed that the Crimson Heir himself was not among them.

" _My - Death -Eaters!_ " enunciated Voldemort — it seemed hard for this form to speak English unless it had Harry's body to cling to, but he did it — " _It - is - I… your - true Lord - returned to you! - Soon… my… resurrection - will be - complete… and - our - three - greatest enemies - are here… kill them - protect your Lord!… then conquer the Castle - in my name… while I… prepare… my true return!_ "

Well-trained henchpeople, the Death Eaters did not question this turn of event for more than a few seconds, before they ordered themselves to surround her and Dumbledore and lurched for the attack.

Hermione cast a Shield Charm as quick as she could, buying herself a few seconds to think. She considered. Trying to duel them would have been suicide — Dumbledore could do it and win, or, perhaps, at least stall them, but not her, certainly not her. Her fire-breath? She could take out a few of them, but Voldemort _was_ Fiendfyre now, and so he could certainly counter her attack somehow. So what then?

She felt at her pockets. She usually kept some useful things in her pockets and on her belt. Usually just spare quills and notepads, and as for the Babblebook, it was of little immediate use, but — that was it! The Invisibility Cloak! Making haste, she snatched the folded cloak from her pocket and draped it on herself. The Death Eaters stared dumbly as she vanished, few of them even suspecting she could have access to such a thing at all. (This gave a window for Dumbledore, already fiercely duelling the Dark Wizards, to Stun one of them, then transfigure his robes to lead, pinning him to the ground.)

Using the cover of her invisibility and her light weight and figure, Hermione darted _between_ two Death Eaters, unseen, then away from the Chamber. She had to warn the Castle. Dumbledore could keep the Death Eaters busy, but not forever — sooner or later one or several would break way from the fight, and climb up into the Castle to sow terror. Or recruit some of the older Slytherins. Or Imperius themselves some curse fodder from the Hufflepuff Common Room, come to think of it. Bad news all around anyway.

Reaching the girls' bathroom, she pointed her wand straight at Moaning Myrtle and gave her her best authoritative look.

"Myrtle, there are some Death Eaters down there," she told the ghost, "and Tom Riddle is leading them. Do what you can, call the other ghosts, do _something_ — they _must not_ be allowed to climb up into the Castle. Block them for as long as you can."

The ghost girl's transparent lip quivered. She opened her mouth slightly, ostensibly to wail—

" _Do it_ ," Hermione repeated. "I'm sure you can."

She turned on her heels and was away.

* * *

"Professor Snape! Professor McGonagall! Professor Flitwick!" she called as she ran through the corridors. "High alert! High alert! Help—"

A door opened, revealing a smiling toad in pink.

"— oh, hello, Umbridge. Not now, thank you."

"Why ever not?" asked the older woman. "I understand that you, a pupil, are, for once, seeking the guidance of a Professor. Am I not a Professor?"

"…You really think you could help?" she asked, dubious.

"I can't imagine why not. Let it not be said that Dolores Umbridge abandoned her employ in the Castle's hour of need! Hmhm!"

"Oh, fine," Hermione said, deciding this was the best way to finish the conversation. "The short version is, Death Eaters in the Chamber of Secrets, the Turban is Fiendfyre possessing Harry's scar, Dumbledore dueling, please hurry."

Then she sprinted away from the pink Cauldron Thickness Professor, who had frozen still, her grin as hollow and motionless as a skull's. Hermione estimated she would be stuck like that for quite a while yet. Which was all the better.

As she passed another door, she heard a hint of a well-known voice. Without warning, the opened the classroom, and, as expected, found the golden phantom of Grindelwald teaching a class of Second-Years. The Defence Professor's voice stopped dead in his throat as she strolled in. The class were equally petrified; she shot them all a dark look and said:

"Well? _Class dismissed_! Return to your Common Rooms immediately!"

After a second's hesitation the young wizards and witches leaped from their seats and left.

"What is happening?" asked Grindelwald.

"There are seventeen Death Eaters in the Chamber of Secrets and Albus is dueling them and the Turban is with them and he has been possessing Harry as a Teriarch-contained Fiendfyre snake and I need your advice," she said, churning out the syllables as fast as she physically could.

Grindelwald's mind was no slower than her speech at its worst, and he gave a sharp nod.

"…Get Fawkes," he then said — or rather, ordered — he was in strategist mode. "Have the bird bring all of the Order of the Phoenix here. Find all battle-able Professors you can. Max, if possible. Call the Auror Department. The number one priority is to kill Voldemort. Without him the Death Eaters are trapped in the Castle. This—"

"No," Hermione interrupted him.

" _What?_ "

"No," she repeated. "The number-one priority is to prevent the Death Eaters from spilling out of the Chamber and attacking the students."

"…Ah, right," the Professor accepted, slapping his aged forehead. "Always forget that. Avoid civilian casualties. Yes, of course."

He thought for a moment more.

"Animate the Statues of Hogwarts," he added, "if you can and need more manpower. Provided you can find them, get the versions of Voldemort you have entrapped, also. They are bound to help protect the Castle, so they cannot refuse, and they must have invaluable insight about how the enemy thinks."

"Got it," said Hermione, once again whirling away and continuing her dash through the corridors.

* * *

She ran and ran, getting Flitwick here, Vector there, with those she could find splitting off from her to come to Dumbledore's aid in the Chamber of Secrets. She was even able to locate Professor Max, for once, and the mad old man seemed ecstatic at the news she brought (the thrill of battling Dark Wizards, no doubt). The Portraits around her heard her warnings and communicated the message to the various classrooms, so that nearly all students found safety in their Common Rooms. She nearly tripped over the Golden Griffin, who recoiled at the sight of her but agreed to help as well — he was good at blocking staircases, having had rather a lot of practice.

Due to the ethical dodginess of creating a bunch of sapient beings as glorified curse fodder, Hermione decided to save _Piertotum Locomotor_ as a last-ditch measure. That left the two missing Voldemorts, the Locket and the Ring, the Chimp and the Knight.

She went back and forth and back and forth, and up and down the stairs to and fro the very top floors, trying to find the accursed statues. They couldn't leave Hogwarts, they simply couldn't. So what? She needed to find them. She _needed_ to find them, the more she thought about it, the more evident this got; Grindelwald had had a flash of genius with that idea. She _needed_ to _find them._

*SBROING*

A strange noise not unlike a Conjuration Spell erupted from behind her. She turned round to find a great black door had materialized in the wall where there had been none. Was the Castle Hogwarts itself doing her a favor? Or had the Death Eaters done some ritual to create a Black Portal of Doom from the Chamber right into the seventh floor of the Castle?

One way to find out.

" _Aberto!_ " she cast the Door-Opening Charm, because what was the point of knowing that spell if you were going to use _doorknobs_ all the time.

The humble reddish sparks of the Charm were enough to push the Black Door of Doom open, which was encouraging.

This revealed a place not unlike the Chamber of Secrets if it had been redesigned to be even more gothic and majestic — which was quite an achievement. It was a gigantic throne room of dark stone and green velvet, with inanimate statues of snakes, of Salazar Slytherin and of the Dark Lord himself wherever the eye could see. Gold and silver, jewelry and trinkets, was spread about nonchalantly.

Sitting on two opposite thrones with a chessboard between them were a silver monkey and a 15th century terra-cotta knight.

"So _that_ 's where you've been hiding."

The two Dark Lords stared at her, then at each other, then at her again.

" _How are you here?!_ " spoke the Knight. "The secret to entering this chamber is more exclusive than Parseltongue, we ensured it."

"Yes," said the Chimpanzee. "It is the Throne Room of the Heir of Slytherin. _Not_ some secret corridor. Only thrice-repeated, earnest knowledge that one is the Heir of Slytherin, and demand for one's rightful legacy, will reveal the gate."

"So tell us," the Knight continued. " _How?_ "

Hermione gave them a blank look.

"…I honestly don't know."

"Typical," huffed the Knight. "Alright, if you cannot tell us the how, tell us the why. What is the reason you sought us out?"

"Since you asked, the Castle is under attack by your stupid Death Eaters," she replied, "but wait, wait, this bears investigating. I got here by wishing I'd find you, and… and, yes, that's right, I did pass this corridor three times, and I thought the same thing each time. That must be how this works."

"…What do you mean?" asked the two Riddles in unison.

"I mean that this room appears when you wish for it. When _anyone_ wishes for it."

"That - that can't be _right_!…" protested the Chimpanzee. "Why would Salazar Slytherin have given his throne room so little protection?"

"And why would Salazar Slytherin have made a throne room?" Hermione asked in return. "Because I don't care what sort of delusions of grandeur _you_ have, but Salazar Slytherin was not some sort of evil overlord. He was a schoolmaster. A murderous, Dark Wizard of a schoolmaster, but he wasn't trying to _rule_ anything. The only point of his Heir was to carry on his idea of how to care for Hogwarts. So why a throne room?"

"I—"

Before the Voldemorts could offer a reply, she carried on.

"Second question: why would a throne room created a thousand years ago have such good likenesses of _you_ among its statuary?"

"Ah, we actually have an answer for that one," said the Knight, sounding inordinately pleased. "The Throne Room obeys the Heir's wishes. Concentrate enough, and you can change the decorum, materialize new furnitures and ornaments."

Hermione took a moment to process this information.

Using Occlumentic resolve, she began to focus on an image.

"Only the Heir's wishes, you think? Because we saw how well that worked out for the entrance…"

*SBROING*

"…a-HAH!"

A big, purple slab of stone now stood between her and the Voldemorts, looking for all the world like it had always been there. On it, carved in faux handwriting, the words: _BIRTH DOES NOT MATTER._

"Right then," she asked the two possessed statues, "is this the sort of thing which a random Muggle-born girl should be able to conjure up if this were Salazar Slytherin's Throne Room? Hm?"

The Horcruxes blubbered and stammered incoherently, unable to process the earth-shattering existence of the purple stone.

"Alright," Hermione cut them short, "out, both of you. I need to so some further testing. Because I'm fast developing a theory, and it would be extremely, extremely useful if it's right."

"…what? No!" the Chimpanzee protested. "No matter what you say, this is our Throne Room and we're going to stay in it! You have no right to oust us like this!"

"Wrong, wrong, { _wrong_ }," she taunted. "Didn't you hear me? The Castle is under attack! It's your duty to protect it, remember? The place: the Chamber of Secrets. The man to report to: Dumbledore. Go along now, chop-chop!"

" _BAH! BAH! BAH_ " the two shouted in chorus as they hurried out of their so-called Throne-Room.

Their Throne Room which was not a throne room at all, Hermione now suspected. Or, in a way, it was. And it was a million other things. Odd as it seemed, everything pointed towards the Room being nothing short of a genie made chamber — a room that became whatever you wanted it to become. But the question was, was it limited to just variations of "personalized lair"? Could you summon things other than variously-carved stone? Because if it _wasn't_ … if you _could_ … then she could do so.

Many.

Things.

With this.

When she was sure that the Voldemorts had gone, she sauntered out of the Throne Room herself and closed the door behind her; with no one in the Room to sustain it, as predicted, the Black Door of Doom vanished.

She concentrated on a wish for a lavish bedroom, with a well-stocked bookshelf by the four-poster bed, and a glass of milk on the beside table. Neither quite her bedroom at home, nor her bed in the Common Room, but an idealized in-between (why not?). One. Two. Three.

*SBROINGGGGG*

Cautiously, she pushed the door open — and it worked! It worked!

With the notable exception of the glass of milk, which instead contained pure water. But violating Gamp's Law was, perhaps, too much to ask.

She checked the bookshelf; the books were not, as she had briefly feared, blank or filled with gibberish. However, she recognized them as books from the Hogwarts Library — or, rather, copies thereof — but the selection of titles was too specific for coincidence. The Room obviously couldn't create new knowledge out of thin air, nor summon any existing tome; it drew what information it couldn't get from the subjects from the rest of Hogwarts's stocks.

That limited her options somewhat —

— but then again, only somewhat —

oh, would that Ron or Neville or someone would have been here to tell Hermione just how very, how very very scary her smile was, as two statements echoed through her mind. Their authors could not have been more different.

But the Chamber of Secrets' enchantments were different from the rest of the Castle's; in any but the purely architectural sense, it was not _part_ of the Castle. That was the first statement, Voldemort's statement, just ten minutes earlier.

And the other statement was, in fact, a lesson. A certain, very instructive Charms Lesson from Professor Flitwick.

After committing the bedroom to memory (really a nice design; she might return there) she walked out once more and closed the door, letting it puff away into nothing. And then, steady now, one, two, three —

" _I wish to access the Hogwarts Enchantments' Keystones. I wish to access the Hogwarts Enchantments' Keystones. I wish…_ "


	66. Summer Interlude IV

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _I know, I know. This is either a very long Interlude, or a very short Chapter. Hope you don't mind. Either way, please review! Next up: St. Mungo's and international politics… there, I've said it, now go ahead and make your guesses what the plot of Fifth Year will be in this revised timeline. _

**Summer Interlude IV:**

 **Or, How To Wrap Up A Plot In Five Easy Steps**

"Yes, Miss Granger, I know you're a very competent witch, but I really must ask," Professor Flitwick pressed as Hermione prepared to board the Express. " _How_ did you make the Castle Hogwarts fly?"

It was the fifth time the Charms Master asked, and as for people asking in general… she'd stopped counting.

Making Hogwarts fly had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, but, in hindsight, an excellent one. Once the Castle had taken flight a hundred feet in the air — _without_ the Chamber, since its enchantments and the Castle's were separate — there was little the Death Eaters could do to threaten the students and Professors. None of them had thought to bring their _brooms_ to a raid on the Castle, especially at such a short notice.

Hermione sincerely thought that Professor Dumbledore alone could have gotten rid of the entire party given enough time and a bit of luck, especially with the two Horcruxes and Fawkes to help him — but it had not hurt to send in some backup. It came in three waves, first the Order of the Phoenix, then the Aurors, and, finally, the Cauldron Inspectors (rallied by Hermione's bold claim that the Dark Lord's planned resurrection would involve an unregistered custom-made cauldron).

And the results spoke for themselves. Three of the Death Eaters had been killed and the rest captured, tried and sent to Azkaban, all in an afternoon. As for Scardemort the Fire-Snake, the Aurors were just beginning to try and figure out what to do with him when Professor Max showed up, spoke an ancient and eldritch word, and departed with a tamed, surprisingly cuddly Scardemort around his shoulders like a scarf. It took a few minutes for the unfortunate law-enforcement to realize just what had happened, and search the Castle as they might, they found no trace of the unlikely duo. It took a while more for Dumbledore to explain to them that this was absolutely expected of Hogwarts's one-and-only Ghoul Studies Professor.

But as for the way she had made the entire Castle fly to begin with, well, Hermione couldn't really answer that. There was probably no other witch on Earth who could do as much with the Room of Requirement as Hermione, and she wasn't about to let anyone else meddle with it — not even Albus, or Harry, or Ron — for now.

Yet, obviously, questions were asked, over, and, over, and over again. And she grew tired. Realizing that if she didn't give some sort of definitive answer now, inquiring letters would plague her through the summer, she finally relented:

"Oh, very well, I'll tell you. In two words."

"Yes? Yes?" Flitwick squeaked.

" _Wingardium Leviosa_."

And she hopped on the train, just as it departed for King's Cross, leaving a very stunned part-goblin Charms Master behind.

* * *

"Alright, three questions."

Such was the Granger parents' reaction as Hermione finished her tale.

"By all means, go ahead."

"One," said her mother, "why do the final confrontations with the evildoers always happen at the end of your school-years? It's almost as though all those Dark Wizards are trying to be theatrical."

"Perhaps they _are_ ," Hermione mused in reply. "Certainly, if Lord Voldemort ever decides to stop being an evil overlord, he can always try the stage — he's got the monologues down. And the hubris. But I have another theory."

"Oh? What's that?"

"I think the villains are _lazy_ ", she explained with a grin. "They spend the entire year perfecting their evil plot — they procrastinate — until they see July looming by, and realize they really should get to it before everyone goes on holiday and there's nobody left to oppress. …That's my theory, anyway, and I'm sticking to it."

The Grangers shared a laugh with Tsh — who had, in fact, been the one to make the suggestion, after he had himself raised the same question during the Express trip.

"…You had another question? Two?" she then prompted.

"Yes," said the male Granger. "How did you get your Castle to come down again?"

"Oh, I didn't," she answered simply. "The Levitation Charm's been absorbed into the enchantments matrix. I'm not entirely sure even _I_ could deactivate it at this point. Perhaps I'll think of something this summer, but in the meantime, to get in and out of Hogwarts, it's either Fawkes, the Floo, or plain old broomsticks."

"Hahè Now that is simply… heeheheheeh!…" laughed her father. "…And finally, he Minister, Cornelius Fudge, that is — what _did_ happen to him?"

" _Well_ ," Hermione replied, not without what Snape would call 'an insufferable know-it-all grin'. "No one _really_ knows yet. But I _have_ read the reports — they're very thorough — thorough, that's the one good thing one can point out in the Ministry's paperwork. And I have formed a theory."

She let the silence linger.

"…Well?"

"You know how magical children can cause magic to happen to and around them, when they have very strong emotions?"

"Of course," nodded Daniel. "Even you showed signs of it when you were a toddler — not many, but a few — I think that time all the water in the tub vanished after you threw that tantrum must have been a spell, looking back."

"Alright," she continued, "and you remember that there's a spell — normally a very complex spell — that allows you to turn into an animal form that closely suits your personality?"

"How could we not," said Sally, "with both Professor McGonagall and your… Gerald White… heh, I still can't quite get used to that… being living examples of it?"

"Good, good," Hermione moved on. "And you do recall my frequent comparisons of Cornelius Fudge's emotional state to that of a young and temperamental child? Hm?"

"…Yes…" muttered Daniel, who didn't quite want to know where she was going with this.

" _Well,_ " Hermione concluded snidely, "the paperwork _does_ mention that there are some potted plants not far from the Ministerial desk — and that, when examining it, the Auror in office noticed they were being heartily chewed on by a very fearful-looking, rather plump snail… with a lime-green shell. …Make of it what you will."


	67. Saint Mungo's

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _There! Never say I don't spoil you. Tournaments and Healers, as promised. As always, thanks to all who have already shown support to this story through Favoriting it, Following it, or, even more importantly, Reviewing it. Please carry on. And with that, here we go into this brave new Fifth Year!_

 **Chapter LXIII: Saint Mungo's**

Saint Mungo's was a pretty amazing place, all in all. Not that one could tell from its unassuming entrance — which was disguised, Statute of Secrecy oblige, as a dusty shop window. Wonders started with the animated mannequin who served as the entrance clerk, though Hermione was going to check whether it got paid later, and if the answer was no, heads _would_ roll. More generally, it was notable as the British magical hospital, and one of the best that worldwide wizarding Healing had to offer. Its devoted staff cured everything — non-magical injuries, if not immediately fatal, were usually a few minutes' work to repair, and as for magical illnesses, it was a testament to the Healers' ability that the Janus Thickey Ward (for long-term care patients) only ever contained two dozen people at the most.

Unfortunately, not only was one of them still Director Barty Crouch, who had still not woken from his coma to reveal whatever his son had tried to kill him for - but on this sunny 21st of July, freshly returned from family vacations in Italy, it was for said ward that Hermione Granger was headed, with her friend and mentor Albus Dumbledore by her side. They had come to visit one of her best friends, Harry Potter. Sent to the Hospital over a month before, the poor boy had been undergoing treatment after treatment, each more experimental and unsuccessful than the last — which not too surprising, as being possessed for several months by a Horcrux soul-shard manifesting as a Fiendfyre snake nestled in a Killing Curse scar was… not exactly an ordinary case of the flu.

If she was being honest, Hermione rather blamed herself. All the warning signs had been there, from a shift in personality to antisocial behavior to refusing to take off a turban. Yet she had not acted until it was nearly too late. Scardemort had been foiled, yes — but Harry had paid the price.

"Hermione," Dumbledore told her as they walked down the busy corridor. "I pride myself on knowing my friends well — and I would wager that as we speak, you are blaming yourself for Harry's predicament."

Hermione have the old wizard a playful frown.

"Albus, I don't care how good he is, the Turban has nothing on you as a Legilimens."

"I was right, then," he replied. "Well then — don't. You may be Harry's friend, but I am his teacher. Though it was surely your fondest wish to protect him from harm, it was more than that for me. It was my duty. And so —"

"Oh, don't _you_ dare blame _yourself_ —"

" _And_ ," he finished, "I was going to say, if — in all modesty — if I saw no more than you did, then I can safely postulate that there was nothing anybody could have —"

This confidence-boosting boast was cut short by an elderly Healer with a pointed gray beard and beady golden eyes, who pushed both of them aside with spluttered, hurried excuses:

"Forgive m—coming through—clear the way—thank y—"

Behind him trailed an operating table of deep brown wood, mounted on wheels. And on it lay the terribly mangled, bloody form of a young wizard. For a moment, Hermione and Dumbledore thought they spotted something dreadfully familiar in the blood-covered face and the jet-black hair — but both soon heaved a sigh of relief as a bump in a corner lifted a lock of the patient's hair to reveal an unblemished forehead.

"I say, that's odd," Dumbledore commented after a moment."

"What is?" she asked him. "Medical emergencies are not exactly an outlandish sight inside a hospital, are they?"

"Of course," he explained, "but I have not known the Healers of St Mungo's to use such devices as that table — not since the Mobilicorpus Charm was devised over eighty years ago, at least."

"Perhaps that Healer is a traditionalist," Hermione proposed.

"Perhaps," he answered, stroking his beard thoughtfully. Then, he shrugged: "Oh well. Let us be off!"

* * *

Harry (as usual these days, or so they heard) was unconscious when the two came into his room. The most striking thing about his still form was, no doubt, that he was bald — hi head having been shaven to facilitate the Healers' work, with not a doubt. His scar, while no longer the horrid gash they had seen in the Chamber of Secrets, was still a much larger wound than it used to be. It was obviously still open, and appeared to have been stuffed with some sort of pure-white, magical cotton — which didn't look at all comfortable, though Harry's sleeping features were nothing but peaceful.

The Boy Who Lived was not the only still form in the room. Wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a plain chair, was a sleeping Ginny Weasley — Ron's spunky sister whom Harry, at some point, behind Hermione's back, had elected as his girlfriend, and who had proved a fiercely loyal romantic. In a spacious cage next to Ginny's chair was the only girl in the world with a serious claim to caring more about Harry than Ginny Weasley — the snowy Post Owl known simply as Hedwig. She also seemed to be taking a nap, though this being the day, and her being an owl, this was not all that strange.

Finally, the third occupant of the room was a female Healer, a witch in her 40's with black eyes and hair, dark skin, perhaps too strong a chin, and an irritated expression to match Professor Snape's when he noticed Professor Umbridge was in the room. She seemed busy with the unconscious patient, waving her wand in quick, jerky motions over his scar and muttering inscrutable spells under her breath.

After a few moments of polite waiting, Dumbledore coughed in an effort to be conspicuous that was totally lost on the Healer.

They waited.

The Headmaster coughed again.

Eventually, Hermione's patience ran out and she walked to the Healer, waving her hand before the woman's eyes in an effort to be noticed.

The woman carried on for a moment, then yelped and took a step backwards. She then gave the visitors a hopelessly lost look.

"…Uah!?"

"Ahh!" said Dumbledore, cordial. "Madam Patil, is it? So glad you're on the case. This is Hermione Granger — and I trust you know who I am?"

"Ahghhh!…" the Healer replied, uselessly opening and closing her mouth without managing nay words.

Eventually, 'Madam Patil' (who did indeed bear some resemblance to Padma and Parvati, now that Hermione thought to look for it) pulled herself together and strung words into a working sentence. Unfortunately, those words were not of the polite sort.

"YYARGH! Mungo damn it to the f—" and so on.

"Might I know what the trouble is, Madam?" Dumbledore asked.

" _This_ is the trouble!" she answered, pointing at the scar. "This _thing_ doesn't make any _sense_!"

"I understand that this sort of Dark Magic is a little outside of your—"

" _A little…_?!" she interrupted. "This scar could be coming from another universe, it's so outside of wizarding understanding! I never get the same results twice, no matter what tests and spells I use!"

"True," nodded the old wizard, "Dark Magic's adaptivity always was its most deplorable feature… Still, I did not expect it to be altogether so bad… after all, the soul fragment has been extracted, has it not? And it was never a proper Horcrux, to begin with —"

"That makes it all the crazier!" Patil shot back. "And as for the soul being gone, I thought I could at least depend on that, but just as you came in — it registered — it registered —!"

"It registered _what_?" Hermione demanded.

"It registered that this boy contained _three different souls!_ " roared the Healer.

Hermione and Dumbledore shared a long look. Patil did not back down.

"…You're sure it's not just because I waved my hand in the way of your spell?" Hermione suggested.

"Even if that idea made any sense, which it doesn't," answered Patil, "that would only account for _two_ souls."

"Ah. Yes. True."

The three people looked at each other blankly for fifteen seconds.

"…You know what? I'm going to take a break. His condition is absurd, but it's stable. Talk to him if you want to."

And with that, the Healer stormed out.

The two turned their attention to Harry.

"Alright, so how do we wake him up?" Hermione asked.

"Why, with some jiggery-pokery and a dash of mumbo-jumbo, of course," answered the Grand Sorcerer.

Without taking out his wand, Professor Dumbledore cracked his knuckles and walked closer to the bed. Very gently, he raised his left index and touched Harry's nose with it. There was a burst of blue sparks and Harry woke up with a start.

"Huh?"

"Oh, you have _got_ to teach me how to do that," Hermione told Albus before turning to Harry. "Hello, you."

"…Hello, H'rmione," Harry mumbled before opening his eyes more fully. "…Huh. Sorry about the… slur. I'm not feeling entirely… hmm. Hmurk."

"It's alright, I understand," she reassured him. "Still, you're looking better."

"Hmshrd."

"Sorry?"

"I said," he repeated, more distinctly, "it's not hard. I… I fell in deep, didn't I."

"…Yes, you did," Hermione answered, laconic, before Dumbledore got the chance to make a speech out of it. "But it's fine. You're better now. And Scardemort is… gone."

Or, at least, gone wherever Professor Max went when nobody saw him. Which, to be fair, was probably as close to outside the bounds of time and space as you could get without a broken Time Turner.

"Thasgud." mumbled Harry with a smile.

"I would like to, once again, give you my most sincere apology for not noticing your troubles sooner, Harry," Dumbledore said, grave.

"Slright, Prof'ssor…" said Harry, and Dumbledore seemed greatly relieved that Harry's voice, slurred or not, made it clear that he did mean it — that he held no resentment whatsoever for his old Professor.

Hermione took a small rectangular package out of her pockets — small for a package, but rather large for something to carry in a pocket.

"Undetectable space-extension charms on my robes," Hermione said in answer to Dumbledore's unspoken question.

"Here," she then said, putting the object down on the bed, next to Harry. "I brought you something."

"…'zit a book?" Harry asked with a knowing smile.

"Of course it's a book," she shrugged innocently. "Do you _know_ me?… I think you'll like this one. It's about courage and hope. And it has an invisibility cloak. And flying."

"Uh _do_ like flying," Harry laughed. "…nd the rest. Thanks."

Clumsily, as if he hadn't used his hands very much in a long time, he unwrapped the novel. He looked at it for a moment then turned towards the smiling Dumbledore.

"'ve you got a pres'n too?…" he asked. "I mean, 'mnot trying to be greedy…"

"Don't apologize," answered the Headmaster, "there is no shame in it. Being spoiled by your friends is, I find, one of the few perks of a prolonged stay in the hospital. And as it happens, I do have something with me."

Harry's eyes widened in expectation.

"It's a secret," continued Dumbledore, putting a finger in front of his lips. "I know you like secrets."

Slowly, the old wizard lifted his hat, revealing a carved wooden goblet at least twice as high as the hat that had concealed it so far. Hermione gave him a pouting luck.

"Oh, don't be that way," she complained.

Ignoring her, Dumbledore deftly took the Goblet off his skull and held it closer to Harry.

"Harry, it is my great pleasure and privilege to introduce the Goblet of Fire."

To his dismay, Harry did not appear to have much of a reaction to the revelation of the artifact. He frowned.

"…The Goblet of Fire? From the Triwizard Tournament? Also known as the Crucible of Destiny or the Impartial Judge. No?"

Harry shook his head, contrite.

"Oh dear," muttered Dumbledore. "And I counted on your knowing about the Goblet and its significance. …I know that Cuthbert is not the most gripping of lecturers, but I think, my boy, that you may stand to brush up on your history."

Harry gave an apologetic sort of half-shrug from beneath his bedsheets.

"Well, then, I think it falls to me to teach you, then. The Goblet of Fire is an enchanted artifact dating back to the Middle Ages, which wields prophetic powers only equaled by the most learned and gifted of Centaurs, or, perhaps, the Pythias of old. Its purpose is to sort, among an arbitrary number of candidates, those who would provide the most memorable and admirable spectacle. Additionally, it binds them to this role, forcing them to abide strictly by the rules of the Tournament."

"What tournament?" asked Harry.

"Ah! Well, we were getting to that," said Hermione. "The _Triwizard_ Tournament. A contest of wit, skill and wizardry between the champions of the three oldest schools of magic in Europe. Hogwarts, Beauxbâtons, and Durmstrang. It was the very stuff of legends for six centuries… then attitudes changed, people realized it was _not okay_ for a school tournament to have a death count, and it was discontinued."

"Y'know, I think I see where they were coming from…" Harry remarked.

"Of course," she agreed. "But the solution to something amazing being broken isn't 'destroy the thing'. It's 'fix it'. Which is what Albus, Ron and I have been doing through letters for a month. We hope to have everything ready for next year. And let me tell you, it will be safe, but it will also be _spectacular_."

"Perhaps you would like to contribute some ideas for what the various trials might be?" suggested Dumbledore. "Traditionally, there were only three tasks, but we have decided expanded this number to twelve. Indeed, this was your friend Ron Weasley's suggestion."

"'Never enough of a good thing,' were his exact words," Hermione supplied.

"Here are our plans so far," said the Headmaster, handing Harry a scroll of parchment.

Harry took them and began reading.

"Huh," he noted. "Potion-brewing? Th'third trial includes… huh? Aren't you afraid? What with… Percy."

"Percy, Shmercy," Hermione waved off. "One: we're going to be careful and use his stupid standardized cauldrons, just to be on the safe side. But more importantly, two: no regime lasts forever… especially when they tick me off. Sooner or later I'll convince Fudge to change back, or he'll go completely gaga and be locked up here in St Mungo's, or a meteorite will fall on his head, or…"

The boy gave a weak smile, then drifted back to sleep.

Hermione sighed.

"Oh well," said Dumbledore, "he should be able read the rest of it later, I suppose. Far be it from us to distract him from his recovery."

"Yes…" Hermione glanced at Ginny. "On the other hand, should we wake Sleeping Beauty and Hedwig, here? I suppose they must have stayed up all night with Harry, or they wouldn't sleep so deeply, but… at the same time, I feel weird walking in and out of here without letting them know we were here."

Dumbledore shrugged, as much at a loss as she was.

"Wait. I have an idea."

* * *

A few hours later, when a particularly loud imprecation from Healer Patil finally ended her extended nap, Ginny would be greeted with the sight of a neatly written note, glued to the tip of her nose.

 _Hello, Ginny! Hope you slept well! We visited Harry… probably a few hours ago. That's why he suddenly has a book and a scroll on his bed. Hermione & Albus_

* * *

That should have been the end of today's excitement. Dumbledore would Apparate Hermione home, where she would enjoy a nice afternoon with Nettle and her parents, finish the biography of Marcus Tullius Cicero she was reading for Holiday fun, and generally relax. With a bit of luck, she would not even have to worry about war and politics and death again until September, barring a possible Order meeting or two.

This was not to be.

It was simple and quick. As Hermione and Dumbledore walked out of St Mungo's, heads as light as one could be with a friend still in hospital, they passed a Muggle in the street. It could not have been more obvious that he was a Muggle — for one thing, he wore trousers and a jacket; for another, his hands were free, and the pockets of those trousers and that jacket were much too small to contain a wand. He looked about forty, clean-shaven, on the plumper side, and walked with strained breathing. And just then, he collapsed with a groan, clutching at his heart.

Without thinking, Hermione rushed to his side and felt for his pulse. She found none.

Though mere dentists, her parents were doctors enough to have taught her how to identify most emergencies, when she was younger.

 _Cardiac arrest_.

The best thing to do, they had told her at the time, was to immediately perform C.P.R. and have someone call an ambulance. But that had been when the Grangers didn't know about any other magic than speaking to snakes — when they had no clue that something like this might happen a few paces from a magical hospital that could cure all Muggle ills with more certainty than any CP.R..

So it was against the rules… who cared? Not Hermione. In a split-second, she had made her decision. She snatched Dumbledore's blue cloak from his shoulders; the old wizard had not even begun to protest that she had already draped it over the Muggle and propped him up by his shoulders.

"Help me! Quick!" she said through her teeth, with a nod towards the shop window.

Dumbledore stood still for just an instant, then ran to her side. Without taking his wand out (this was still a Muggle street, though no passers-by seemed to have noticed them or the man yet), he waved his hand over the man's body and cast the Mobilicorpus Charm.

While he levitated the still form of the Muggle, Hermione banged on the glass window, trying to get the mannequin's attention. It turned towards her.

"His heart's stopped!" she said, frantically gesturing at the floating man.

The mannequin didn't have to be told twice, and the group entered back into St Mungo's without trouble.

"His heart's stopped!" Hermione repeated as soon as they came into the lobby.

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long. The same wizard with the pointy gray beard they had bumped into earlier was there, talking with a nurse. He turned around in an instant, with the practiced calm of a doctor who had frequently dealt with emergencies of this sort. He touched his long reddish wand to the man's chest, traced a symbol, and said:

" _Restituo Pulsatio!_ "

Just like that, the man's eyes opened. Naturally, he exploded in a flurry of questions and confused yelps, because the main lobby of St Mungo's looked neither like the street he last remembered, nor like what any person of his non-magical condition expect of a hospital.

"Calm down, sir, you must calm down," said the Healer, business-like. "Oh, dash it all. _Somnium_. There."

He went to sleep. The Healer looked up at Hermione and Dumbledore.

"A… friend of yours?" he asked.

"No, we just came found him like that."

"Well, at any rate," he answered, stroking his grey goatee, "he was lucky. I was very busy with… you saw me, didn't you? That poor boy… but somehow, he vanished before I could do anything to help him. I mean literally vanished. Poof. Cloud of smoke and he was gone. I… have no idea what that was about. I'll have to investigate. But in the meantime…"

As he spoke, the wizard continued to wave his wand over the man, performing more diagnosis charms.

"Well," he said in conclusion, "it appears this was nothing more than an ordinary case of heart failure."

"I have no doubt," said Hermione.

"No traces of Dark Magic whatsoever," the Healer continued. "But here's what bothers me — it does seem, regardless, that he was attacked."

"Why?"

"I can't detect…" the Healer gave a cursory glance at his patient's pockets. "No, I'm quite sure now… this poor chap has lost his wand!"

Dumbledore tensed, but Hermione remained calm.

"Ah, well, he wouldn't have one."

The Healer quirked an eyebrow.

"Why ever not?"

"Because, as far as I know, he's as Muggle as they get."

The Healer blinked rapidly.

"Ah… you _are_ Muggle-born, aren't you?… I suppose he is… a relative?…"

Hermione stared him down.

"I told you," she repeated. "I've never seen him before. And as for him, you saw his reaction when you revived him. This is a man who has never seen magic before today."

By now, _several_ other St Mungo's employees were looking at her.

"You _do_ realize," the Healer said, his voice strained, almost pained, "that this is a _gross_ violation of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy?…"

"Well? What are you going to do?" she answered without a care in the world. "Arrest _me_?"

* * *

"Oh."

* * *

Hermione had said it before: every regime would fall, in the end, unless they were perfect. Or had a time machine. Every regime would make a mistake, take a false step, and it would all come tumbling down.

And in all fairness, perhaps this hadn't entirely been _Percy_ 's mistake — that law far predated him. In a way, it was the I.C.W.'s mistake.

But a great mistake was made on that day, a mistake to topple empires, and that was locking Hermione Granger in Azkaban.


	68. The Prisoner's Dilemma

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _…oh dear me, is that the time? They should have clocks, but for, like, weeks instead of hours. Here I was with this entirely ready on time chapter and what are you talking about, and I didn't know it was TIME to post it yet! Wah-hah-hah, the shenanigans. …Seriously, I'm sorry. This is only our second-longest hiatus so far, to be fair, which I now realize isn't actually that much better. Where was I? Ah yes. Hermione. Azkaban. The terrible cliffhanger I left you with. …Thanks to all who show support for the story by Following, Favoriting or Reviewing it, and if you haven't done any of these three things yet, especially that last one, then please do. And now:_

 **Chapter LXIV: _The Prisoners' Dilemma_**

Hermione was _not_ recommending Azkaban. Not at all. In fairness, the Dementors, after getting a taste of Hogwarts Castle, had rebuilt their rubbled fortress with much more architectural flair — all turrets and galleries instead of the squat, blank, pyramidal block of Ekrizdis's original design. But a mildly improved layout did little to alleviate the sheer fact that Azkaban was, entire on purpose, the gloomiest building on the face of the Earth. The lifeless grave-littered soil surrounding the prison itself, the stormy sky above, the cold grey waters of the North Sea were a pretty depressing sight to begin with, and even more devastating were the effects of the Dementors' aura.

As she was stripped of robes, wand, Babblebook, and — most infuriatingly — Time Turner, Hermione was already getting pretty grouchy, though the supernatural reasons behind it were not yet obvious; she was pretty sure she would have been grouchy to lose her time machine and other knickknacks even if she'd been looking at a sunset in the Alps while surrounded by unicorns and baby snakes.

When the Dementor handed her prison robes that were already moist and tattered, she noticed her own lack of a sarcastic répartie, and she began to wonder.

By the time she was taken to her cell, she was in the _foulest_ mood she could ever remember getting.

* * *

The cell itself was furnished as miserably as its new occupant was clothed, the mattress slumped and gray with dirt, the small table askew, its wood already rotten to the core (even though it _had_ to be just a few months old since that was how much time had passed since the fire). As was typical of a Dementor-built home, considering the non-beings' distaste for sunlight, there were no windows; the sickly-green glow of weird black torches lining the prison's hallways was all the light they had, entering the cells through the barred doors. It needn't be said that there was nothing even remotely resembling isolation or central heating; Hermione's resistance to cold (gained in her regeneration) was extremely fortunate indeed. Sound isolation was also a no-go — moans and groans echoed from one end of her wing to the other.

Once he had her under lock and key, the Dementor didn't linger and glided to the cell opposite her. Her head clearing a little as the distance between her and the closest wraith became greater, Hermione looked through the bars of her cell to see who was the unlucky prisoner who had now caught the Dementor's absence-of-eye. She saw a wizard with a long black beard, discolored skin, sunken eyes. His entire being quivered as the phantom loomed closer and closer.

"N..n-no…" he muttered before breaking into a scream: "NOT AGAIN! _PLEASE_!…"

Then his voice and he collapsed as one as the Dementor took in a long, long breath, absorbing not the cold and wet air of the prison but what little hope and happiness the prisoner had managed to accumulate since the last feeding. It lasted and lasted — tears rolled down the prisoner's long cheeks and got lost in the black beard.

Hermione turned away.

That she had recognized Rodolphus Lestrange, one of the already convicted Death Eaters re-captured in the Chamber of Secrets, one of the Longbottoms' torturers even, made little difference. What the Dark Wizard had done in the First Wizarding War had been monstrous, yes, but that did not make this institutionalized torture any less monstrous in its own right.

Worse, the only difference in the treatment of prisoners at Azkaban was length of imprisonment; a lighter sentence meant a shorter, but not, in any way, easier, stay. It wasn't just Cruciators like Lestrange suffering here, there were petty thieves, tax evaders… hell, Hermione herself was only here pending trial. Of course, in her case, it was only because she'd refused a truly prohibitively expensive bribe to the relevant Ministry official, who, in spite, had thrown the book at her — she _could_ have been waiting in a Ministry cell right now — but surely there must have been people not too moral, or simply too _poor_ , to pay that bribe before her? And these people, many of whom might well be innocent, were here too, feeding the Dementors against their will.

She sighed, and, running her fingers along the cold black stone wall, she began to try and think of her defence at the trial. The tricky part being that she was conspicuously guilty, with a number of Healers under oath to pledge for that, and, for that matter, no intentions of disguising it. If what she'd done was a crime, then it's the system that would have to budge, because she, stubborn Gryffindor that she was, would not depart one inch from What Was Right. Indeed, a grand sweeping speech and a clever scheme for repealing the Statute of Secrecy would have been ideal, but such a feat would take her quite a bit more time and effort than she could muster from within Azkaban. And even then, it would have been so much easier without Fudge's gastropod fugue and Percy's dictatorial lunacy.

Problems, problems… Fudge, Percy, Umbridge, the Turban of Doomy Darkness, Lady Monroe, Crouch…

Crouch.

Now, Crouch — if Crouch tried to break his Death Eaters _back_ out of Azkaban… well, that might actually be _useful_ , now that she thought about it. She could exploit that in, oh, any number of ways. If nothing else, Azkaban would probably be destroyed in such an endeavor, again, and she'd get different, hopefully warmer, more Dementor-free housings. Alternatively, she could foil the attempted breakout herself and thereby get a pardon for heroic deeds. Or perhaps she could slip away _alongside_ the Death Eaters, disguised as one of their own. Who was a female Death Eater? Bellatrix Lestrange — she was unaccounted for at the Chamber, so there was no risk of running into 'herself'…

Hermione then caught a glimpse of her purple hand, realized her mistake, and laughed out loud at her lapse in judgement.

In the middle of Azkaban.

Within earshot of a Dementor.

This was a bad idea.

It wasn't too strong a laugh, but it was enough for the ghastly jailer to abandon Rodolphus Lestrange (who looked just about bled dry, anyway) and stride back to her cell, obviously not having had his fill yet. Brimming with greed, the spirit opened her cell and closed in on her.

She felt it, the Dementor forcing himself into her mind, her Occlumentic tricks bypassed with ease as the foreign probe awakened long-faded memories of sadness and strife while it searched for a happy one.

"Oh no you DON'T!" she shouted, focusing her entire mind on the concept of rejection.

The Dementor's raspy breath halted as it was momentarily kicked out of her soul. Then, as he processed her wrath, he delayed his second attack, quizzically tilting its hooded head.

She crossed her arms and _huffed_ at him.

"Have you forgotten who I am?" she asked. "And yet you were inside my _head_ a few seconds ago!"

The Dementor leaned forwards a fraction, and 'spoke' in Dementors' doomy, telepathic way:

' _WE HEAR THIS BOAST OFTEN. IT IS USELESS. YOU ON THE ISLAND ARE ALL OURS; WHO YOU WERE IN ENGLAND IS UNIMPORTANT_.'

She had an overwhelming urge to _slap_ the demon, and didn't hold back; the rotten face and frayed cloth that her palm struck might as well have been of ice-cold marble.

' _FOOL,_ ' he said, mocking, and before she could reply, or slap him again, she felt him once again prying her mind, _feeding_ , and she was back under the Unforgivables of the Death Eaters at the Frost Fair, and hearing about death for the first time as a child, and seeing Harry possessed by the Horcrux, and— and—

— and you know what? She'd _beaten_ the Death Eaters, and the Horcrux, and she'd even beaten _death_ , and she wasn't going to let some greedy Grim Reaper get the best of her.

She constricted her stomach and called up just a flicker of cursed flame, and _spit_ it at the Dementor's face.

Gravity suddenly taking its full hold on the large non-being, it fell backwards, clutching at its face. Hermione made a slurping sound and reabsorbed the spark, leaving the Dementor on the ground with a charred gap on the right of his skull, black ichor with silvery highlights dripping from the wound.

It was not screaming, or moaning, or any of the things a being of flesh and blood would have been doing in its place; instead it broadcast a single, continuous, telepathic call of pain and distress.

Which in all fairness _was_ a Dementor's way of going:

' _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!_ '

* * *

The injured Dementor's fellows did not take long to answer his call, and found Hermione standing defiantly over their fallen comrade, daring any of them to come any closer.

' _YOU DO REALIZE WE COULD SUCK OUT AND OBLITERATE YOUR SOUL._ ' said a Dementor whom she thought was her old _friend_ from Hogwarts, 'Rufus W. Grinchy'.

"You do realize I could burn half of you to oblivion and reduce your prison to ash," she said in return.

To corroborate her words, she let another wisp of blackish-red flames briefly escape her lips before sucking it back again.

Smirking at their predicament, she let them reel from the realization of their situation in confused, slightly traumatized silence.

"What we have here, gentlemen, is more or less what we humans like to call a Prisoner's Dilemma."

It was hard for beings without eyeballs to give a blank stare, but by Merlin, they _did_.

"Ah, I see you have not heard of it," she continued. "I thought as much. It's hardly the sort of story Ekrizdis would have taught you, since it has a moral about goodwill and cooperation. Well, it's game theory… not that I think you know what that is, mind you. Regardless. Let us imagine there are these two prisoners—"

' _THERE IS ONLY ONE PRISONER. YOU ARE THE PRISONER._ ' said the Dementors, with obvious irritation.

"— _don't interrupt!_ —" she hissed. "Two prisoners, accused of the same single crime. Once their hearing comes, each has a choice to confess or to say nothing."

' _WHICH ONE IS GUILTY?_ ' said a Dementor, obviously asking for them all.

"It doesn't matter," she answered. "Now if—"

' _IT_ _MATTERS_ _,_ ' insisted the Dementor, creakily waving its long arms for emphasis. ' _OF COURSE IT MATTERS. WHEN THEY READ THE MIND OF THE GUILTY ONE THEY WILL KNOW HE IS GUILTY. I DON'T THINK I UNDERSTAND._ '

"God! This is a Muggle court, and, and let's say neither of them did it! Alright!?"

She _glared_ at them.

A Dementor slowly, tentatively raised a bony hand.

' _BUT WHAT IF—_ '

" _No_! The answer is no! Please just listen to me," she pleaded. "The crux of the situation is that if one prisoner confesses and the other stays silent, the judge will believe the one who confesses, give him a long prison sentence, and let the other one go free."

' _THIS IS A VERY GULLIBLE JUDGE_ ,' commented Rufus W. Grinchy.

"Maybe," she granted. "Thus, both prisoners, who want to go free, will decide not to say anything. Yet if they _both_ stay silent, the judge, knowing one of them has to be guilty—"

' _I THOUGHT YOU SAID WE WERE WORKING FROM THE PRESUMPTION THAT NEITHER WAS ACTUALLY GUILTY._ '

"But the Judge doesn't _know_ that!"

' _WHY, WASN'T_ _HE_ _LISTENING TO YOU? I THOUGHT LISTENING TO YOU WAS IMPORTANT._ '

"No!" she cried, exasperated. "He can't reach the metafictional fr… never mind. No. He doesn't. He thinks at least one of the two prisoners is lying. So he can't let them go. Yet by the same logic, one of them is innocent. Hence, he'll give them both an equal prison sentence, shorter than for someone he's sure is guilty, but substantial nonetheless. …On the other hand, if they both say they're guilty, the judge will sentence them to an even shorter sentence, because he realizes there's something funny going on and he doesn't want to punish too hard someone who confessed under duress or something."

The Dementors stood there. Either they understood it perfectly or had no questions, or they didn't understand at all. Hopefully, it was the former.

"…So the question is, what should any prisoner do? The obvious answer is 'say nothing, and hope the other fellow confesses'. That way you'd walk away free. It is very tempting to decide that the chance that you will be freed right there and then and cleared of all charges outweighs the risk of a long sentence if your luck runs out."

' _THEN THE PRISONER SHOULD DO THIS AND DRINK SOME LIQUID LUCK, SHOULDN'T HE?_ ' suggested another Dementor.

"It's a Muggle in a Muggle prison," Hermione repeated. "He doesn't _have_ any _Felix Felicis_. Alright?… So as I was saying, most people, on balance, will decide that this is their best option, and so will say nothing."

The same Dementor then spoke again:

' _BUT THEN, IF I AM CORRECTLY FOLLOWING THE PARALLEL YOU MEAN TO DRAW BETWEEN THE STORY OF THE MUGGLES AND OUR SITUATION… WE SHOULD SUCK OUT YOUR SOUL?_ '

"Ahah," she replied, "you _think_ you should, just like the prisoner thinks he _should_ say nothing. However, this is stupid."

Hoods tilted.

"Because the _other_ prisoner isn't an idiot, and their situation is exactly the same. Thus, they will decide exactly the same thing. Their best option is to say nothing and hope the other fellow confesses. So _they_ will say nothing, and _you_ will say nothing, and you'll both get a lengthy sentence."

Bony fingers twitched.

"That is to say, half of you will get burnt to a crisp _and_ I'll lose my soul. Everybody loses."

A couple of Dementors in the back actually looked _scared,_ one holding the other hand's so tightly that were it real human skin and bone it would surely have shattered.

"So, the correct solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma is to confess, knowing that the other fellow will reach the same conclusion. Both will have a short sentence and then go free."

' _SO… NEITHER OF US SHOULD HARM THE OTHER. WE SHOULD WORK TOGETHER TO MINIMIZE DAMAGE TO ALL OF US._ '

"So you _do_ understand!" she celebrated, jumping at the Dementor in a hug — something she instantly regretted, as the Dementor's body was still ungodly _cold_.

She took a few steps back, rubbing at her frozen forearms, and said, somewhat apologetically:

"Of course, this is a heavily simplified version of the story and the logic behind it. I didn't even go into the concept of Nash equilibrium and things of that nature. I'm not the greatest authority on them either, really. What I described is a little more akin to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, which is a very scary thing Muggles do with bombs. But the name was too lucky a coincidence to pass up."

The Dementors just stood there in their usual weird, not-even-staring-at-her-due-to-having-no-eyes, nonchalant way.

"…So moral of the story, don't attack me and I won't attack you."

' _WHYDIDNTYOUSAYTHATINTHEFIRSTPLACE!?_ ' Rufus W. Grincy mind-shouted, jumping in place like the world's ugliest pogostick.

"Let me just get that straight," she answered. "Is that a _yes_?"

' _OBVIOUSLY! GRR._ '

 _Thinking_ 'grr' was, she noticed, notably less effective at conveying the mood than _saying_ 'grr'.

Alright then.

"Good, at least we've established _one_ thing," she said. "I'm… still not entirely sure you have a conscience, not that it makes much of a difference if you don't, mind you, you're still thinking beings with feelings and I'll work out peace between you and wizardkind if I have to drag both of you kicking and screaming, _but_ you _can_ make logical bargains that involve not trying to eat someone's soul. That's nice to know."

' _FOR WHAT?_ '

"Because as I said. I'm trying to work out a better treaty between you and wizards."

' _BETTER FOR_ _WHO_ _?_ ' asked Rufus the Dementor, suspicious.

"It doesn't involve you getting to eat more souls, if that's what you're asking," she replied moodily. "Actually, it involves you eating _less_ souls. By which I mean _zero_ souls."

' _WHAT?_ _NO! I'M NOT SURE_ _ANY_ _OF US ARE GOING TO AGREE TO THIS PLAN._ '

Hermione grabbed the Dementor by its black collar and forced it down, closer to her face; took a very deep breath; and spoke.

"Let me make myself clearer. You should all have realized it was coming when a baby killed the Dark Lord, someone survived the Killing Curse, and a Parselmouth was Sorted into Gryffindor, but apparently the entire human race is too thick-headed to take a hint. And I thought, maybe the Dementors will fare a little better, after all, a prisoner literally destroyed their prison and almost exterminated them, and then you had to run away to the girls' bathroom in a school for children. But apparently, no, not you either. So let me spell it out for you, as one-time I-won't-repeat-this opportunity: THE WORLD IS CHANGING.

It won't be done in a day, it won't be done in a year… I think… but from the moment I spoke to my first snake and realized no one would believe me when I told grown-ups they were people just like us, I've known that there's something wrong with this entire universe, and I shan't go until I have fixed it _wholly_. I'll attempt to do this the nice way, finish my schooling, get elected to the I.C.W., implement mass reform. And should that fail, I will simply have to do it the hard way. Regardless, it is in all honesty that I tell you that in a hundred years' time, scholars will be looking at history _pre-_ Hermione, and _post-_ Hermione. I'll make this world _right_ or I'll die trying, leaving a smoking crater behind me.

This brave new world I mean to create will be a place of goodwill between species, between all intelligent beings, who will appreciate and respect each other's existence, and powers, and opinion. Now, unlike snakes, who are darlings, you present me with an issue. You are part of the problem both as victims, _and_ as culprits. You are oppressed and despised by the wizards, and for that reason I mean to help you. But not only do you survive by painfully feeding off others, you rejoice in it. The first part would be bad enough, but give me a month and I'll find you an alternate misery-free food source. I promise. The question is, do you want to? Because it's your choice; I won't force it on you. You can live on a reformed people, or you can become ash paving the way to heaven.

And choose wisely.

Because I'm pretty sure I'm literally the only witch in the world who will give you this choice rather than start blasting."

* * *

The Dementors stood.

They never truly spoke, and they didn't even do their telepathic-transmission thing all too often unless you asked them a question.

But right now they really were, in every way, _speechless_.

Hermione let the stunned mood linger for an instant before breaking the silence:

"…Don't worry, you don't have to choose _right away_. I'll be here for a while. Being imprisoned. …Of course, if you could tone down everyone else's torture right now, I _would_ take that as a gesture of good faith. In unrelated matters, do you have some parchment and ink?"

The Dementors once again stood dumbly for a few seconds, then three of them ran off in opposite directions faster than she had ever seen a Dementor go.

* * *

 _Dear Mum & Dad,_

 _Do you know how relaxing to finally say what's on your mind to someone? Anyone._

 _Anyway, I'm not entirely certain what Albus told you, but yes, our dear Ministry has offered me some unexpected vacations to Azkaban Island. The view isn't much, but the locals seem nice, aside from being hooded corpse-shaped embodiments of despair. They have a surprisingly competent chef, although he only knows how to make cold food. The other inmates… most of them did try to murder me last Christmas but they're mostly too lobotomized to speak, which is nice._

 _…_ _I'm sorry if any of that sarcasm drips of the page and stains your carpet, but yes, this is all very unpleasant. I don't know how long I will have to wait before that stupid trial._

 _Come to think of it, I don't even know of a way to send this letter. Darn. If you do receive this letter, would you please write back explaining the manner in which you received it, that would be hugely helpful and Merlin what am I even talking about._

 _I should probably stop here._

 _Your daughter,_

 _Hermione._


	69. Azkaban Vacation

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This is a more… quiet kind of chapter. It wasn't really meant to be; there was going to be a more confrontational scene at the end, which, as the rest of it grew and I reached the 3k mark, I ended up shoving off into the next chapter instead. But I kind of like it that way. It's nice to have a bit of time to breathe once in a while. I'm sure Hermione thinks so. Besides… quiet doesn't mean boring (hopefully). And with that somewhat-cryptic Author's Note, and my usual request for reviews and thanks to all my wonderful readers who support this story, I leave you to your reading!_

 **Chapter LXV: _Azkaban Vacation_**

Over the three weeks that followed, slowly but surely, Hermione got used to life on the prison island. She had red Professor Max's monograph on Dementor biology with great interest back when she was dying, and it was interesting to find herself in a position to complete its information with her own observations. This was rather easy, as their outlooks were fundamentally different: Max, out of personal taste, chose to see the worst in the Dementors' nature; Hermione, being Hermione, sought with all her heart to see the best in them.

Thus, where Max had delighted in describing every ghastly detail of their putrid physiology and of the hoary tortures they could inflict, she tried to find evidence ( _any_ evidence) of Dementors acting kindly. If not towards the human prisoners — _that_ was doomed from the start — then at least towards one another.

Her investigation, rather easier than it would have been for someone who had to stay in their cell, was not entirely fruitless. Not once did she find two Dementors fighting; some avoided one another, out of obvious enmity, but they always refrained from feeding off one another or fighting over a given prisoner.

Although the wraith did not display affection, as such — oh, what a strange sight two Dementors holding hands would have been — she _did_ spot duos or trios of Dementors who often tended to flock together. No doubt they chatted, though as they did so in Dementors' strange thought-speech, there was nothing Hermione could have overheard. Few Dementors at all stayed by their lonesome; she supposed it made sense for a species of telepaths. One of the few exceptions was the elder of their people, a Dementor so old he remembered the days before Ekrizdis — that same old grump whom, at Hogwarts, she had dubbed Rufus W. Grinchy for how unfriendly he had been to his generous human hosts. It brought her no small amount of satisfaction to learn that her spur-of-the-moment christening was accurate to this extent.

She did regret one thing, and that was her wand. Had she been home, thanks to her parents' clever trickery with the Floo, she would have been able to practice her magic; whereas here, she didn't have her wand. It was unnerving, lack a wand — _your_ wand — after you'd been bonded with it for so long. The tips of her fingers often ached with pins and needles as her magic fizzled inside her with no outlet. Sooner or later that sort of frustration would result in a discharge of accidental magic; she could only hope no one would get hurt.

Besides, a wand would have been so _useful_. If she'd had a wand, she could have Transfigured better furniture for herself, brought a big more color to her bedroom — her cell, officially, but since she went about as she pleased, it was really more of a bedroom. She could, also, with sufficient work on her _Gemino_ , have gotten some more parchment for her writings; she'd had to begin to ration her supply, as the Dementors had very little of the stuff.

Dementors, in general, had very little… stuff. Little furniture, barely any personal possessions. She wondered how much of that was because of what had been destroyed in the fire, and how much was simply Dementors' different way of doing things. Or, as it were, not doing would make sense, again, for beings who subsisted on raw thought and magic to care little for material items. At the same time, though, they'd clearly put a lot of work into the new building; so they _had_ to care, to some extent, didn't they?

Hermione's thoughts returned to the parchment. She'd wasted so _much_ writing letters that, without any Post Owls on the island, she had no way of sending. Azkaban inmates weren't supposed to send or receive mail (few would have been in a position to do either with any sort of efficiency, of course), and as for the Dementors, if they _had_ to send a message to the Ministry, then circumstances would probably be dire enough that the incursion of one Dementor messenger on British land would be tolerated. But her letters to her friends and family, to the _Other Paper,_ to the _Prophet_ , even to the _Quibbler_ , were, perhaps, important to _her_ , but hardly of national importance.

If only—

 _CRRRRRRRRLLSPLLL—_

She started at the strange noise, which she realized had come from one of the very few, very narrow windows in the new Azkaban building. It was a strained sound, something wet painfully squeezing itself between the mouldy stones. Ignoring a passing Dementor, Hermione sped to the slit in the wall to get a better look. Just then —

 _—_ _SPLCRRLSJLLLP-_ **POP** _!_

— the _thing_ completed its trip and landed in a small, shivering heap on the black-tiled floor. The visitor was small and feathery, and its sparkling whiteness, even dulled as it was by how soggy the rain outside had made it, was a stark contrast to how dark everything was in the prison. From a distance, it would have been easy confuse the white creature for a Patronus… Hermione shuddered; as pleasant as a Patronus would have been, summoning one within Azkaban would have been an act of war against the Dementors. She hoped no one in the Ministry or elsewhere would be that stupid.

But the snowy owl before her was no Patronus.

" _Hedwig?!_ "

The courageous bird shivered on the floor, unresponsive, its wings wrapped around a reddish-brown package.

Hermione went to stroke and heat her, then thought better of it and instead turned to the closest Dementor, who didn't seem to pay attention to her. In a quick, angry motion, she grabbed the phantom by his hood and pulled him closer to her, forcing his attention on her.

"Hey. You. Minor addition to my rules." she said. "That Owl is not to be touched any more than myself. Are we clear? And pass this on to the others."

She let go of the wraith, who glided away rather more briskly than was the Dementors' usual pace. _Then_ she hurried to Hedwig, who, as the Dementor's aura receded, was already getting back on her feet, though her wings still quivered. She pushed forward the package with her beak.

Her fingers trembled with excitement as she seized the package; she struggled against the wrapping, which was hard leather, not paper; and in a whirlwind of sparks the wrapping _disintegrated_ , knocking her backwards in surprise. Well, that accidental magic hadn't taken long. But as expected, before her now sat the Babblebook, intact as the day she made it.

Quickly, she opened it, and motioned for Hedwig to speak.

 _I came here,_ she said, _to tell you that my Harry has recovered_. _He wishes he could see you. He wanted to make sure you were alright._

"Ah… of course… you must all have been so worried…" she realized, feeling a little bit guilty as she thought of her pile of unsent letters. She'd been more upset at the waste of parchment than she'd thought of what their poor targets must have been thinking.

 _Well!_ answered the snowy owl, _not_ _that_ _much, of course. Considering your previous contacts with Dementors, we did think they wouldn't be… too hard on you. Although I hadn't thought you would order them about like you did just then… for that I thank you, by the way._

"Don't mention it," Hermione said good-naturedly. "A little Dementor-bullying between friends — we _are_ friends, aren't we?"

 _Friends of my Harry are my friends_ , was Hedwig's succinct answer.

Hermione's smile at that was a bit forced. People at Hogwarts thought Ginny was too clingy of Harry, but she was positively distant compared to Hedwig.

"You're… so loyal," she couldn't help but comment. "To Harry. And so brave… you flew all this way, through the storm? Towards the island of Dementors?"

Hedwig nodded, in Owls' peculiar way of nodding.

"You… you are one of the bravest people I've ever met," she told Hedwig (and in the back of her mind were her talks with Albus about Professor Snape, and the nasal voice of Snape shouting ' _You picked an OWL over ME?_ '). "I'm friends with the Sorting Hat, you know—"

 _I know,_ Hedwig cut her off, her chirps sounding positively offended. _My Harry tells me everything._

"— oh, I don't doubt it — well, I wonder what he'd make of you," she finished. "Do you think you'd be a Hufflepuff, or a Gryffindor? In the absolute, that is. Obviously, you'd rather be a Gryffindor in practice, so you'd be with Harry. But purely based on your character, what would you say?"

Hedwig had no answer to that.

They made light conversation for a few moments more, then Hedwig spotted the pile of letters waiting. Leaving the Babblebook with her, Harry's Post Owl took flight, now loaded with the many, many messages telling the Wizarding World that yes, Hermione Granger was alright, but could they please hold her trial already? Because she was getting antsy in her moist retreat. Hedwig promised to come back soon with the replies.

* * *

One day passed, then two, then four. By the end of the week, Hermione had set camp next to the window, watching for a small white silhouette on the horizon. Yet none came.

Ah, the window — she'd checked further and realized it was the _only_ proper window in New Azkaban, small though it was. As she thought about it more, Hermione realized the Dementors must still be sore about Sirius's escape and were determined not to let it happen again. They'd spent hundreds of years with a perfect track record. Then just in a few years, Sirius; and then Crouch Junior, whom they'd reported dead years ago, crawling out of the woodwork somehow; and now all those Death Eaters. It must have been pretty infuriating. (As time passed the Dementors had begun acting somewhat friendlier towards her, and she'd assumed it was simply that they warmed up to her, or that they'd gotten less scared of her as the days went by and she refrained evermore from spitting more fire at anyone's face. But within this new framework, perhaps it was just that she hadn't asked the Dementors to let her go — something they would definitely have had to let her do, but oh, how it would have wounded their pride.)

But if that window was going to be the only one in the prison, it had to be special, or it would have been quite a waste — and, indeed, for all that it was small and narrow, it was quite a vantage point. In the front, the setting sun, on those few days where you could get a glimpse of it behind the dark gray clouds. On her right, the Dementors' great sailing ship, which they had rebuilt alongside the fortress; since the wardens let her soul alone, she could see it plainly, humongous, angular, awe-inspiring and more than a little bit spooky. Minus the red sails — Dementors, being blind, didn't give a damn about color, and made everything black and gray by default; that included the sails, which seemed to be of the same fabric as their cloaks — minus the red sails then, the boat was the very picture of the Muggles' famed _Flying Dutchman_. And to the left, finally, there was a patch of earthy, barren land with a single grave. It was going to be the new prison cemetery, she guessed. No doubt a well-garnished graveyard had stood there before Barty Crouch Jr. had burnt it all.

"How did you built all this?" she asked to no Dementor in particular, one day, as she strolled through a great corridor, admiring the stonework, the archways. Oh, it was all very gothic, both in the architectural sense and in the aesthetic sense — but in its own way it was beautiful, and it was grand.

One Dementor — as nameless as the others, but she knew him by sight; his cloak was shorter than others', his neck was very long but his fingers were unusually short for a Dementor — turned towards her. He was one of the friendlier ones; friendly, for a Dementor, meant that he neither scowled at her when she passed him by, nor scurried away in fear, but rather tolerated her with an indifference that she heavily suspected of being feigned.

 _'STACKING STONES',_ the nameless monster thought in her direction, sending a note of sarcasm, ' _IN THE CORRECT PATTERN. IT IS AN ART YOU HUMANS KNOW, I THINK?'_

She had to chuckle at that. As she did so the Dementor tensed, obviously resisting the temptation to suck out her glee and feed on it; but to his credit he succeeded.

"Alright," she granted, glancing up at the high ceiling, "but it takes more than knowing the pattern to build a castle like this. One this high. With stones this heavy. You would need magic… or machines. But you don't have machines. I would have seen them at some point, wouldn't I?"

' _AS CONCERNS STRENGTH…_ ' the Dementor began, but he did not finish his thought.

Instead, calmly, coldly, he _punched_ a clean hole in the wall next to them.

"Ah… right."

' _AND AS FOR HEIGH — REMEMBER, WITCH —_ _OUR OLDEST AND STRONGEST_ _CAN_ _FLY,_ ' the Dementor reminded her. ' _AS IT HAPPENS, I AM ONE OF OUR FLIERS._ '

"Oh, of course," she replied. "You know, we wizards and witches have been struggling with that. Flying under our own power. I'd like to learn, at some point. It's not just for myself, mind you; it's also for a friend. But whatever the secret is, I want to know it."

The phantom didn't answer, not properly, but she felt a note of 'amusement'. And just a bit of the thought 'perhaps'.

"…You know," she told the Dementor, giving him a wide smile, "I think I _like_ you. …You should have a name, if we are to talk more."

' _IF YOU SAY SO,_ ' he shrugged. ' _NAMES ARE THE THINGS OF THE LESSER… OF HUMANS AND OTHERS OF THE FEEBLE FLESH. WE, WE ALL KNOW EACH OTHER, BY THE TASTE OF OUR THOUGHTS. IT'S EASY. BUT YES, IF YOU WISH, I WILL TAKE ON A NAME._ '

"Do you have any in mind?"

' _NO,_ ' the Dementor conveyed, with a note of annoyance. She should have known this, he meant. He'd just explained just how little his people cared for names.

"Alright then," she said. "You say that you can fly, and that you're going to teach me, and you leave on a magic island, and you'll never age. …Have you ever heard of James Matthew Barrie?"

The Dementor shrugged.

"Alright then!" she finished, chuckling. "I name you Peter!"

' _IF USING THIS MONIKER FOR ME PROVIDES YOU WITH JOY,_ ' said Peter, ' _SO BE IT. BUT PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU. REFRAIN FROM… EXUBERANCE_. _ESPECIALLY AT THIS TIME._ '

"Oh? Why should I?" she asked, forcing the smile off her face just in case.

' _YOU KNOW THAT OUR NUMBERS HAVE BEEN GREATLY REDUCED. TO COUNTERACT THIS, WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO BIRTH MORE OF OUR KIND. THIS REQUIRES A DARK AND MIRTHLESS ENVIRONMENT, OR THE MAGIC DOES NOT… TAKE HOLD._ '

"Bit weird, that," Hermione commented, committing the fact to memory. "You feed on happiness… so wouldn't it be an evolutionary advantage if, instead, more Dementors were born whenever there was a lot of happiness around, and fewer when joy was scarce?"

' _YOU ARE ASSUMING THAT WE EVOLVED,_ ' said Peter, intentionally mysterious.

Dementors' origin was a mystery even to wizards.

Some said they were the first natural Legilimenses, from prehistoric times; before wands, before incantations, wizards and witches who had focused their magic on the mysteries of the soul, trying to live off it alone, until they were twisted and transformed into something inhuman. There were precedents to such magical Lamarckism.

Others thought that Dementors, like Poltergeists, were stray emotions that grew from ambient magic into fully-fledged beings; a statement not as outlandish to magicals as it would have sounded to Muggles. Wizards' souls exuded their emotions as other creatures breathed air; spells like the Killing Curse or the Patronus Charm harnessed the magical energy of those emotions, Dementors fed off it. It was not so outlandish, then, that the magic of despair might linger in a place even after its source had gone, and then, in the peculiar way of powerful spells left unchecked, grow under their own power into something _else_. Hermione somewhat doubted that this was the case for Dementors; they were too complex, too powerful to simply be magical accidents, in her opinion. But who knew?

Finally, there was another theory, that Dementors had not evolved or appeared, but that they had, rather, been _made_. A race of golems rebelled against their creator. This theory was given little credit in scholarly circles, because most of its believers were laymen who attributed the creation of Dementors to Ekrizdis; which was rubbish — there had been Dementors all the way in ancient times. But just because Ekrizdis wasn't the one didn't mean it wasn't true. Ancient Times, Hermione had mused once; given what she now knew of Post Owls' history, of the reality of Athena… Dementors were invisible to Muggles, they looked like dead things, and they reveled in darkness and moisture; the god Hades was said to be invisible, too, and he was the God of the Dead, leader of the Underworld, a dark and damp cavern… it was a thought.

Professor Max, probably one of the few men the Dementors had ever really liked, had reported that he had tried to ask them which theory was right; but the wraiths, while making it clear that there was an answer and that they knew it, had refused to give it up. Perhaps, Max had speculated, perhaps they were afraid that if wizards learned how Dementors had been made, they might get it into their head to _un_ make them.

Well, it looked like even this Peter, whose disposition was much friendlier than his fellows', still wouldn't tell. Oh well.

She had more urgent things to think about. Such as getting out of jail.

* * *

And on the 23d of August, things finally seemed to look up, because of a certain message she received. Oh, it had nothing to do with her trial — her suspicion that someone at the Ministry was purposefully delaying it was fast growing into a certainty. Instead, it was a personal letter, brought by a Hedwig even more battered than the first time around, as she'd had to outfly a duo of Cauldron Inspectors on broomsticks who were obviously trying to block the mail.

Specifically, it was Dumbledore's answer to a letter she'd written at the very beginning of her incarceration, dealing with the Triwizard Tournaments and its rules.

To anyone else, it was mere legal gobbledygook with a bit of somewhat-interesting magical theory.

To the Lady of Loopholes, it was salvation.


	70. Triwizard Champions & Where To Find Them

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Phew! This one is just barely under 4k words, and that's just because I split it in two, at that. But it deserved the length. It's the long-awaited return to Hogwarts… and the Triwizard Tournament! Which, you'll recall, didn't happen yet in the "Parselmouth" universe's timeline. And that means that Fleur, a Seventh-Year in Fourth Year, is now out of school, so you won't be seeing her here, though don't lose hope of seeing her as a character at some point. And now, with my usual pleading for reviews, we're off!_

 **CHAPTER LXVI: _Triwizard Champions And Where To Find Them_**

On September the 1st, back at Hogwarts, students of all ages were instructed filled the hall. Many of the older ones,would have rather been having fun elsewhere, and grumbled and griped all the more that they thought there would be nothing more to see than the Sorting Feast. Many glared at the smug pink form of Professor Umbridge, the Cauldron Thickness instructor, at the Head Table, convinced that her and the Weasley regime's obsession with rules and due form were to blame. But a small group at the Gryffindor Table — Ron and Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter, Maximilian Candy — knew better. Their expectant grins, inexplicable to outsiders, attracted mockeries near the beginning of the ceremony, especially as Hermione's absence made the group seem just a little bit less fearsome. (Still fearsome enough, however, that Draco soon found himself beat over the head with Conjured bats courtesy of Ginny, and that was the end of that.)

Soon their wait was vindicated as a surprising scene unfolded. Professor Dumbledore rose from his golden chair and prepared to address the Hall. Simultaneously, Professor Umbridge stood up and _coughed_ in her usual conspicuous way. Dumbledore heard the cough and eyed Umbridge; Umbridge, taking notice of the Headmaster's presence, stared right back. Both stood in complete silence, each obviously expecting the other to back down and let them speak.

Watching this spectacle, Professor Snape pinched the bridge of his nose and scowled, while it was obviously all Professor McGonagall could do to contain an outburst of giggles.

"Students…" Dumbledore and Umbridge both asserted in unison, before stopping immediately to glare at each other some more.

" _Students…_ " they tried again and stopped in their tracks.

This could have gone on for quite a while.

Very fortunately, Professor Umbridge was not popular in Hogwarts, and to not be popular in Hogwarts while the Weasley Twins still lived was extremely foolish. The marauding duo's first prank of the year saved the situation as Umbridge's shoes grew wheels and, due to a very slight tilt in the floor of the Great Hall, the unfortunate Professor found her brand new roller-skates carrying her out of the Hall and into a strategically-opened broom closet at frightening speed. As soon as she'd crashed into it, the door to the closet bolted itself shut.

Dumbledore gave a meaningful look to Hagrid. Slowly, leisurely, the Keeper of the Keys strolled to the closet; with not a hurry or care in the world, he slowly drew his first keychain from his pocket, and slowly, slowly raised a first key towards the lock…

Satisfied in the knowledge that he had an hour ahead of him at least, the Headmaster resumed his speech, raising his voice a little beyond the usual to cover Umbridge's muffled shrieks of outrage and the laughter of half the Hogwarts student body — even the Bloody Baron snickered.

" _Students_ ," Dumbledore said, "I am immensely glad to see that a new generation has come to Hogwarts to seek the secrets of wizardry, and that an overwhelming majority of last year's students have also returned to us… except…oh my, it appears frightfully few of our Seventh-Years have deigned come back to hoggy, warty Hogwarts… Well, if they prefer fulfilling adult lives to our pile of old stones, it's their business, I suppose."

He let out an exaggerated sigh and quite a lot of older students once again exploded in laughter while the First-Years who didn't know of Dumbledore's reputation stared at their elders in disbelief, trying to get some explanation.

"But for the rest of us," the old wizard continued, "this year will simply not be a year of familiar faces and familiar classes; yes, even today something must take precedence over this oldest of Hogwarts traditions, the Sorting Ceremony."

Gasps ensued.

"Before I can unveil this secret, there are more guests who have yet to arrive," he said before calling loudly: " _Mme Maxime ! Je vous en prie, entrez ! C'est à vous !_ "

A Gryffindor First-Year tugged at Ron's sleeve, asking: "Is Mr Dumboldoor German?"

"No, I think that's actually—and it's pronounced—"

But before the Fifth-Year could finish his answer to the younger child, the great gates of the Hall flew open and revealed an impossibly tall woman in stylish blue robes, the Mme Maxime whom Dumbledore had mentioned. She was eyed very suspiciously by Helen Monroe and her cohort, and made an impression on everyone else, but soon she walked in and revealed a contingent of young witches and wizards behind her, gawking at the Great Hall and its enchanted ceiling as though they were seeing it for the very first time. It was an extremely alien experience to the Hogwarts students, to see so many mages their age for the first time; Hogwarts being what it was, all of a given British generation could get to know itself there. Indeed, if you'd lived long enough as a witch or wizard, you'd know most everyone else in the country by sight, eventually.

It slowly dawned on the students that this meant those people were not of the country. And considering what language Dumbledore had spoken, it had to be France.

Which rather explained Monroe's distrust, actually. Grindelwald had never liked the French, and he had liked them even less after his 1927 attempt to break the Statute in Paris had been foiled.

So then, these were French students; from the École de Beauxbâtons, no doubt.

There were about twenty, of various ages, gender, and appearance (it seemed that, as in the Muggle world, uniform rules were looser in France than in England; all of the French students wore some form of light blue robes, but the cuts and materials seemed to vary greatly). They stopped in the dead center of the Hall, shifting awkwardly in place while Madame Maxime came over to greet Dumbledore and the other Professors formally.

"… _Oh, et,_ Albus, wat iz zat noise from ze cupboard?" she finished after a rather lengthy compliment.

"I believe you refer to a _closet_ , Madam," the wizard answered without losing his cool. "As for its contents… nothing that would interest you."

The contents had probably heard that remark, for which Dumbledore had made no effort to hush his voice, and the shrieks from the closet increased in pitch and vehemence. In an opposite but equal reaction, Hagrid seemed to decide that he had, perhaps, not been thorough enough in his trials of the first fifteen keys, as he had only tried turning them clockwise in the lock; with great compunction, he started over from the beginning, testing them both clockwise and counterclockwise.

" _Il y a autre chose…_ " Maxime added with a note of concern. "Were are my students suppozehd to sit?"

Dumbledore considered this for a moment, stroking his beard thoughtfully, before clapping his hand twice. Instantly House-Elves appeared to the left of the Hufflepuff Table, bringing an entirely new, periwinkle-blue marble table and chairs to go with it.

"Will this be satisfactory?"

Maxime beamed and replied:

" _Albus, vous êtes un parfait_ show-off."

She then bowed her head slightly before taking her seat at the Head Table — in Professor Umbridge's empty chair. Wait, had Dumbledore _planned_ with the Twins?…

While the French got settled, the Hogwarts students waited with bated breath. Unfortunately for their burning curiosity, and for the growing anxiety of the First-Years who just wanted to have their Sorting done and over with already, Dumbledore had to postpone the revelation once again:

"I _am_ sorry. We're still waiting for _more_ guests, whose presence is, oh, absolutely crucial to the spirit of the event."

Once again, he called out an unfamiliar name in an unrecognizable language:

" _Herr Voglerr!_ " he said, " _Ĝi estas via turno, vi povas eniri._ "

Just like that, anybody with an ounce of sense realized that the next guests were from Durmstrang. Sure, Hogwarts and Beauxbâtons wouldn't tell you exactly _where_ in Scotland or the Pyrennées they were hidden, but Durmstrang, and Durmstrang alone, was dedicated enough to the mystery of its location that its representatives would ask to be addressed in Esperanto.

Funny enough, Monroe and her minions looked on with much more favor when the doors were blasted open a second time to allow the entry of a thin young man, pale as death and frail as a rail, his already-thinning brown hair sleeked back à la Malfoy, dressed in a heavy green cloak. The students behind him were closed-faced and fearful-looking, darting eyes around the Common Room.

The impression Hermione had gotten of Durmstrang during her brief visit there to investigate the death of Professor Karkaroff, she had gotten the impression that it was pretty much what would have happened if Hogwarts had only one House and it was Slytherin. In such a climate, it wasn't too surprising that the Durmstrangers were so uncomfortable when thrusted into a room full of so many unknowns, any of whom might be trying to hex them or assassinate them.

Durmstrang did not seem like a very healthy place of learning.

Unsurprisingly, the terrified Durmstrangers were made to sit next to the equally-leery Slytherin. As the closely-huddled group broke out to sit at their shiny new dark green table, the reveal, among their numbers, of famed Bulgarian Quidditch prodigy Viktor Krum caused quite a stir, and it was learned that Harry, Ron and Ginny were not immune to being star-struck. Helen Monroe, for her part, whispered something and made a gesture, prompting one of her Slytherins to go over to the Durmstrang table and start, presumably, to gauge the territory and see what new support she could find.

As Maxime had filled the only unoccupied seat at the Head Table — Umbridge's — Hermione was wondering where this Professor Voglerr would find room. As it turned out, it was Dumbledore's throne which Voglerr chose, and if the Headmaster minded, he didn't show it, even though for everyone (McGonagall included) the presence of the sinister, cadaverous-looking German in the genial and regal Headmaster's place was extremely off-putting.

"Now that we're _all_ here," said Dumbledore, staring up at the starry ceiling with a smile, "I can finally relieve you of the suspense. The truth, as some of you might have guessed, is that in accord with the current Ministry of Magic, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the École de Beauxbâtons and the Durmstrang Institute have decided to reinstate the ancient custom… of the Triwizard Tournament."

The surprise was audible. In particular, there was a great metallic sound Hagrid, due to his unfortunate lack of secret-keeping skills, had, alone in the staff, not been told the news. And so, in shock, he had dropped his keys. Unfortunately, or, depending on the point of view, rather fortunately, this made him lose track of which keys he had and hadn't tried, and so he started over from the beginning all over again. (The sounds emanating from the closet were now more akin to a pathetic whine than to shrieks of indignation. )

"Yes, the Triwizard Tournament, as we all remember it from the old histories — one young champion for each of our three schools will be selected to participate in a number of tasks, as epic as they are daunting, which will test the very limits of their proficiency as students of magic."

There were _ooh_ s and _aah_ s, many emanating from the easily-impressed First-Years (who were beginning to forget about their delayed Sorting). One ghost, however, a greenish young man in battered armor, who generally kept to himself, was notably less impressed.

" _WHAT?_ " he bellowed. " _GOOD GRIEF, DUMBLEDORE, THAT'S BEEN KNOWN TO KILL PEOPLE! …I SHOULD KNOW!_ "

"Ah, Mr Trevor," the Headmaster replied conversationally, "so good of you to come. Don't worry, you are not the first to raise these concerns in this enterprise. Though recognizable as another installment of the old game, the Tournament of 1995 has been redesigned from the ground up with new, especially-created new Tasks. Indeed, there shan't merely be three—"

" _More than three, in something called the Triwizard Tournament? Now don't be ridiculous!_ " huffed the spook.

"—there will be nine. Three times three. Each designed after an old wizarding myth, so as to test your scholarship as well as your fighting capability, your brain as well as your brawn, your soul as well as your flesh. Spaced out throughout the year, the nine Triwizard Tasks will serve both as the champions' trials, and as, well, as a jolly good show for the rest of us, one hopes. _And_ they will all be safe… as safe as an adventure can be, of that is. But safer than the old bloodsports, one hopes, by quite a wide margin."

" _This is acceptable,_ " granted the spirit, who backed down and rejoined the other watching spirits near the back of the Hall, floating above the doors.

"Finally," Dumbledore continued, watching his captivated audience with twinkling eyes, "I am sure that you are wondering how the Champions will be selected. Well! Wonder no more."

He then pointed his long black wand up at the ceiling; no spell was cast, no words uttered, but a jewel-encrusted casket appeared out of thin air just a few feet under the chandelier and began to float down. The Headmaster strode down the length of the Hall to meet it and caught it gently in mid-air. He tapped the lid with his wand and withdrew from its confines a large, dark brown goblet, visibly ancient yet not worn or damaged in any way. He conjured a column-like pedestal, set the object on it and then explained:

" _This_ is the Triwizard Tournament's venerable, impartial judge. The Goblet of Fire. A wonder of Divination magic, who from the candidates' names alone will rule who is worthiest of the rank of Champion. You need only sign a scrap of parchment and plunge it in the Goblet's flames; and once all those brave enough to volunteer have done so, it will give its irrevocable answer."

" _Albus! How dare you! I_ _told_ _you not to bring that—that—_ " seethed the Sorting Hat in the corner, looking away from the Goblet.

"Yes, Hat," Dumbledore said in a tired voice, "I am familiar with your feelings towards the Goblet. However, you have duties to attend; the Sorting Ceremony should not be delayed further. First-years, I trust that Professor McGonagall has explained the Sorting to you? You may proceed, while the rest of you — those willing, of course — can place your names in the Goblet of Fire. Go on — tonight is the night."

Dumbledore looked around expectantly, and while McGonagall began to call the names of the First-Years off her list for the Sorting, the rest finally realized what they were supposed to do. The Hall descended into cheerful chaos as parchment and quills were hurried traded and scrap after scrap thrown into the blue flames of the Goblet of Fire.

So feverish was the excitement that barely anyone noticed how strange it was that, for the first time in a thousand years, instead of an even split across the Houses, _two-fifths_ of the First-years had gone to Slytherin, and only one fifth to each of the other three Houses. Oh, it wasn't that surprising to _Hermione_ , or to Dumbledore, but it would have been to everyone else, who couldn't exactly be told upfront that the eleven-years-old of Britain would henceforth have their minds read by a partial copy of He Who Must Not Be Named.

The Sorting wrapped up without fanfare and the feast began; the throwing of the scraps slowed down, but a few thus-far-undecided third- and fourth-years were still seen making up their minds and dropping their names in at various points in the meal.

After pudding was served, Dumbledore asked if anyone else still had to volunteer their names; Volgerr and Maxime seemed to ask the same question to their own students, speaking in their respective gobbledygooks. No voices rang out.

"Very well," the Headmaster of Hogwarts declared. "Hear: the Goblet of Fire, Judge of the Triwizard Tournament, does acknowledge and recognize that applications for the championship are now _closed_."

No one was sure if Dumbledore's words described the Goblet's function, or if they were an order to it; but the fire receded right then. Just for the hell of it, Fred Weasley threw one last piece of paper (bearing the name 'Argus Filch') at the Goblet, but it was repelled with a violent "crack" by an unseen force before it reached the edge of the artifact and whizzed right back into the sender's hand. The Twins, after a moment of shock, gave the Goblet a look of… respect.

 _Good one, Mr Fancy Kitchenware._

There was a moment of waiting before the fire started anew, a slightly different shade of blue than before, the flames crisper and more… angular, somehow.

"It seems the Goblet of Fire has reached its decision," Dumbledore said.

The blue fire suddenly turned red and a piece of parchment was expelled out of it like a cannonball before floating down, deftly caught in midair by Dumbledore. This was the second time this evening that he caught a flying object with surprising agility — had he been a Seeker when he was younger?

"The Champion for the Durmstrang Institute… is _Viktor Krum_!" he called, eliciting much cheering from Krum's many fans, in and out of his own school, though the result was hardly surprising.

More surprising was the second name that burst from the Goblet.

"The Champion for Beauxbâtons Academy is… _Gabrielle Delacour!_ "

Gabrielle Delacour, a tender little thing of nine, manifested herself with a shy smile. It was, truth be told, always rather odd, how Beauxbâtonians enrolled much younger than Hogwarts did — but that a girl who was so obviously a child would be chosen? Madness. Yet there was no surprise from the other Beauxbâtonians, just pride for the little girl. _That_ was not only weird; it was _foreboding_. Assuming you meant to compete against her.

The Goblet of Fire burned red a third time and a third scrap of parchment was caught by Dumbledore's hand to thunderous applause.

"The Champion for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," he read slowly, "is… Helen Monroe?!"

"Why not?" answered the Dark Lady of Hufflepuff, her voice cold as ice and her smile predatory — she had to be using some sort of spell to make it carry through the entire Hall like it did. "Were you expecting someone else?"

The goldfish-like way that her handsome Seventh-Year and fellow Hufflepuff Cedric Diggory was opening and closing his mouth showed that _he_ had definitely been expecting something else. Before he could protest, however, a friend of his forcefully sat him down and explained to him how joining the Death Eaters to murder Helen Monroe would not be an acceptable reaction to this situation.

As for Dumbledore, he quickly regained his composure and said, still somewhat awkwardly:

"Why not indeed?… Why not. Well. …I suppose, then, that you three Champi—"

 _CRACKSHHHH-!_

The Headmaster whirled back around and realized that, far from deactivating itself, the Goblet of Fire had spitted out… a fourth name? Having noticed this one a little late, Dumbledore very nearly missed it, but, to general applause and after some flailing, he still managed to catch the scrap of parchment before it hit the ground.

Almost mechanically, he read:

"The Second Champion for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is the… the Boy Who Lived."

Harry Potter winced for a moment; Ginny and Ron took hold of both his hands, trying to calm him down. But they soon realized that nobody was looking at him. Instead, a short, proud-looking red-haired boy went to joined the first three Triwizard Champions in a leisurely storll.

"…Wesley Weasley," Dumbledore said. "Did you put your n… did you put this scrap of parchment in the Goblet of Fire?"

"Yes, why, shouldn't I have?" the boy answered. "I thought everyone who wanted to volunteer had the right."

"Yes, but, yes, but—" Dumbledore stammered, uncharacteristically put off. "…Mr Weasley, why did your name come out of the Goblet?"

"Because I'm the Boy Who Lived and I'm amazing. So of course I was found worthy."

"You do realize, Mr Weasley," Dumbledore explained patiently, "that the Goblet is only supposed to pick _one_ Champion. Now how would you explain that Miss Monroe's name came out of the Goblet before yours did, hm?"

"I don't know, sir," shrugged the child. "Maybe she cheated."

"Maybe _you_ cheated!" Monroe answered.

"Thisis preposterrrous!" cried Herr Volgerr in his heavily-accented, stuttering voice. "This is T-trrriwizard T-tourrrnament, not game of c-c-carrrd-ds! It not as-s-s though two c-c-children c-could—"

"Maybe we're both equally good and it's just a tie?" Monroe suggested, trying to be conciliatory.

Or, to take a more uncharitable view of her character, trying to deflect accusations of cheating before someone brought up that it was perfectly within the realm of a determined Helen Monroe's ability to cheat the Goblet of Fire.

"Is that c-c-crrredible?" asked Volgerr.

"It's a theory," Dumbledore retorted.

"Albus," said Madame Maxime, rising from her seat to her full and very intimidating height. "I want to tink better of you zan zat, but if you defend ze cheaters, peeple will be saying zat you are helpign zem because two Shampions for your school means more chances for 'Ogwarts to win ze Triwizard Cup. Or, per'aps, even zat you helped zem yourself."

"I assure you, Mme Maxime—" Dumbledore began to argue, but another loud noise from the Tournament cut his words short a second time.

 _CRRRSHHH!_

He had no trouble catching the paper this time.

"The Champion for the Owls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is… Hedwig?"

The crowd didn't know whether to be appalled, or to laugh.

"…Albus," Maxime reprimanded, "We all know how much you like your little _jokes_ , but zis is getting silly."

"This is no joke," Dumbledore said, extremely dismayed. "Even I wouldn't even know where to begin to _joke_ with the Goblet of Fire. Its magic is the magic of destiny itself, as binding as a Prophecy. From these day forward, all of these… people… are Champions of the Tournament… it is out of our hands, I'm afraid… but… I don't underst—"

 _CRRRSHHH!_

A sixth paper had flown out of the burning cup. Dumbledore went to grab it, but Maxime pushed him out of the way and took it for herself.

"Anozer shampion for 'Ogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is… is… _zut ! zut ! et zut de m… !…_ ze _ozer_ ozer shampion is 'Ermyon Granger!"

"Ah," said Dumbledore, more calmly.

Headmistress Maxime whirled around and marched on the Hogwarts Headmaster, glaring daggers.

"You say zat as eef you _expected zis_! _"_ she accused.

"…Confound it all, Olympe I don't have to justify my _ah_ s to you!…"

" _Oh non_ ," answered the Frenchwoman, "you 'ave many more important things to justify _first_!"

"I'm sorry?" said a sickly-sweet voice, and everyone turned to realize that Umbridge was finally out of the closet.

Hagrid had 'finally' managed to open it with the very last key of his set.

The one with 'Key to the Great Hall Broom Closet' engraved on it, fancy that.

"Did I hear talk of… Hermione Granger?" Umbridge continued, stalking her way back to the Head Table, where she resolutely put her purse down on her chair, reclaiming it from the risen Maxime. "But, ladies and gentlemen! Need I remind you? Hermione Granger is in Azkaban. Isn't she?"

"Professor Umbridge?" said Hermione, tossing off her Invisibility Cloak. "I suggest you reevaluate your hypothesis."


	71. Schemes Within Schemes

**AUTHOR'S** **NOTE:** _Is this chapter a little on the shorter side? …Fine, yes. But you got a veritable mammoth last time; this is basically the second part of the same scene. Hence if you take Chapter 66 and Chapter 67 together as a double-chapter, the word lengths combined do amount to two regular chapters. So I don't think you were actually cheated out of anything here! Oh, and by the by, just to give you something more to chew on: anyone who read Botnik's surreal masterpiece "Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash", and wants more of the same, is invited to check out my very own neural-network-assisted sequel, "Harry Potter and the Rest of the Sentence"! Let me warn you, if you thought "Parselmouth" was crazy, you ain't seen nothing yet. …Anyway, thanks to all who continue to support the story, please review, blah blah, and… here we go!_

 **CHAPTER LXVII: _Schemes Within Schemes_**

" _How dare you?!_ " said a muffled voice coming from an empty space where Umbridge had stood a moment ago.

After minimal fumbling, Professor Dolores Umbridge threw off the Invisibility Cloak that had fallen on her head and looked around, radiating outrage. It took her a while to spot the purple rapscallion, as looking _up_ took some outside-the-box thinking. But there she was — up ahead — precisely in the spot from which the Goblet of Fire had floated down into the Great hall. She wore long, ragged black robes, but the mauve skin, the brown hair that looked more like a brown shrub, and the clever smile were unmistakeable. Hermione Granger was back in Hogwarts.

And she was floating, like one more candle.

Flying.

Without a broomstick.

"Wha… whu… wh…" spluttered the pink Professor.

" _Dieu du ciel…_ " said Madame Maxime.

"M-mein G-g-gott!" cried Herr Voglerr.

Most everyone in the room had similar things to say, or scream, or whisper, depending on individual preferences — though Professor Dumbledore was not one of them, not the group of Hermione's friends at the Gryffindor Table. _They_ didn't seem surprised at all. As for Professor Snape, he didn't look so much stunned as _offended_.

Hermione waited for the shouts to die down before saying, her magically-amplified voice easily covering the last few gasps:

"Well, Hogwarts _is_ a flying castle, now. How _else_ was I supposed to get here?"

This was when Fred and George burst into rambunctious laughter.

"And should anyone be wondering how learned this little parlor trick, then I have only this to tell you: I asked someone who knew to teach me. I don't see why that was so hard to think of."

Snape instantly felt the entire Hall's eyes on him. He blinked twice, then pulled himself back in protest and denial.

"What? No!" laughed Hermione when she noticed this. "No, not _him_. Try again."

Most were just confused; a few people blanched.

" _No_ , not Lord Voldemort, either," she said, moodily. "Ugh. Try again tomorrow, will you? I have more important things to say."

"…You have no right to be saying _anything_!" shrieked Umbridge, pointing her shaky, stump-like wand at her flying form. "You are an escaped convict! Under the authority vested in me by Minister Weasley, I place you under arrest! _Again_! Come down this instant!"

"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Hermione, lazily kicking herself back as if she were reclining on an invisible chair. "I think you'll find I have every right to be here."

"What?"

"Surely," she explained with a sarcastic smile,"both as a Ministry employee _and_ as a Professor of Hogwarts, you have been made aware of the Triwizard Tournament's rules and its inner workings? Once Fate has chosen a champion, it will enforce its choice. It would be fruitless, and, more than likely, dangerous, to try and interfere with the Goblet of Fire's powers. Thus no governing body has the authority to try to forcefully remove a Triwizard Champion from the premises of the Tournament, for as long as it lasts."

Umbridge stood there, her face reddening as she momentarily forgot how to breathe.

"I regret to say, my dear Dolores," Dumbledore said, the very picture of sympathy, "that as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, I have no choice but to ratify Miss Granger's assessment of the situation. She cannot be both an Azkaban inmate and a Triwizard Champion; and it is now beyond your, or my, or anybody's power to prevent her from being a Triwizard Champion. Her escape is but one more offense which we are not at liberty to punish."

"But… but… she set this up! She obviously set this up! _She interfered with the Goblet!_ " pleaded the Cauldron Professor, gesticulating wildly as she spoke.

"Prove. It." Hermione said pointedly, swooping down like a hawk and stopping when her face was precisely on level with the older witch's own.

Umbridge struggled to do anything other than gawk at Hermione for over a minute, eliciting laughs from most of the Hogwarts students. However, she once again managed to find her footing, and argued:

"…It doesn't matter! You… you dare speak to me of proper forms and the workings of the Tournament? _Perhaps_ you caused it, _perhaps_ not, but every rule has already been broken! There are now _six_ Triwizard Champions! _Six!_ … Surely — _surely_ this makes the whole thing null and void, yes?… Well?… Dumbledore! Say something!"

"If you insist, Dolores," the Headmaster said with a frown. "But you may not like what I have to say. The Goblet has spoken. The Tournament is begun. The Champions and Judges have been chosen. Now, nothing short of death can release them — us, I should say; for I _am_ one of the Tournament Judges, alongside Madame Maxime and Herr Voglerr — nothing short of death can release us from our contracts. And even then, even then, this would do nothing to lower the irregular number of Champions; for he who claimed the life of a Champion or Judge would then have take on the burden of their task in their stead. In short, Dolores… irregular does not mean unlawful; the fact is that there are six Champions, four of them with Hogwarts, one of them an Owl. I don't find it any less off-putting than you do, but there is nothing anyone can do. Least of all _you_."

" _I can have her and that stupid owl executed!_ " Umbridge screamed like a Banshee, bouncing up and down in a perfect imitation of an overloaded jackhammer.

"No, Dolores, you can't," said Dumbledore with a palpable authority, a resounding finality in his voice. "You are a… Cauldron Thickness Professor. Not a judge. Be it of the Tournament, or of Wizarding Law. Now, I think it would be _best_ for you to retire to your quarters."

He _glowered_ at her and, rather more meekly than Hermione thought her capable of doing anything, she scurried away and out of sight.

"Well now, the Students have been Sorted, the Champions Chosen, and Dinner Devoured. I suggest we all follow Professor Umbridge's example and retire before something else h—"

Precisely then, something else happened. A dark purple spell tore through the room with an ominous crackling and struck Herr Voglerr, who collapsed onto the Table immediately like a puppet with its strings cut.

The room froze.

Professor McGonagall, who sat to his right, quickly took his pulse and announced the obvious:

"He's dead!"

That might have been enough to start pandemonium, but something more happened yet. The source of the deadly curse was Helen Monroe, who strode from the Hufflepuff Table to the Head Table without a word, her face closed, her eyes determined. Taking advantage of the fact that everyone else was too shocked to stop her, she passed half the Professors and put her right hand on the back of Voglerr's corpse.

"I claim the killing of Voglerr," she announced, "and the spoils — the position of Triwizard Judge! — Not for myself, but for my Master, for I am but his weapon, and my murders are his! And his name —" she screamed this with mad rapture "— is _GRINDELWALD!_ "

It was clear that Monroe, or at least, some irrational part of her, had been hoping for thunderous applause. Instead she caused an uproar. But it didn't last long, cut short by Dumbledore:

" _Enough!_ " he said, and with but a wave of his left hand Monroe's wand flew out of her hand and she was pulled towards him like a nail to a magnet, helpless. " _Helen Monroe!_ Do you realize what you have done?"

"I know," answered the girl, not even slightly repentant. "I murdered a wizard. Probably one of good stock and decent skill, too, if Durmstrang's standards have not dropped too low."

"And yet, you feel no remorse?!"

"It's regrettable," she admitted. "But, sir, it was for the Greater Good."

"How so?" There was desperation in Dumbledore's voice. " _Tell me_!"

"I thought you'd have figured it out by now," said Monroe with a mirthless smirk. "I have made my Lord Grindelwald a Judge of the Triwizard. By your own admission, this is enough for prisoners to be released, hm? Now I have achieved my purpose. Grindelwald _will_ be released from Nurmengard."

"But — at least — the consequences! You are not irrational, surely you must — the consequences of what you have done —"

"There won't be any consequences, not for a year," gloated Monroe. "You can't jail me any more than _her_ ," then she pointed at Hermione. "I'm a Champion of the Triwizard Tournament, too."

"And in a year's time?"

"In a year's time," the witch answered without missing a beat, "my Lord will have conquered this island. He will pardon me, I'm sure — perhaps even reward me for my loyalty."

"You… you _are…_ _mad_ …" Dumbledore said slowly, not as an insult, but with genuine sadness.

"They say the same of you," said Helen, unconcerned.

"Perhaps they're right," Dumbledore said in a tired voice before addressing the entire Hall, Monroe included: "Go! All of you! This tragedy does not change the fact that it is night, and you must sleep. Don't worry. The situation is under control. Go!"

Somewhat amazingly, they went without fuss, silent as the grave. The Heads of House, leaving the Head Table, went after their students, no doubt to deliver a more thorough calming speech to them once all were back in their Common Rooms. Hermione had no doubt in McGonagall and Flitwick's ability to calm down their students, and the Slytherins could probably cope even without whatever Snape was going to say; but all her sympathies were with Professor Sprout, poor, friendly, kindly Professor Sprout who was not remotely equipped to deal with someone like Helen Monroe in her own House.

The Durmstrangers remained uncomfortably alone, until Madame Maxime invited them to follow her and her own students. They too left the Hall, soon followed by the other Professors — save for Dumbledore.

He stood by his golden throne, still occupied by the earthly coil of Julius Volgerr, silent, his pale eyes lost in the distance.

Hermione stared at the pale, thin young man in the dark robes, who was so utterly, crushingly still. Lifeless. Soulless. Knowing what had befallen the previous Headmaster of Durmstrang, she couldn't help imagining it rising and fighting her with the voice and the movements of Barty Crouch Jr.; the sort of thing to have nightmares about, if she had been prone to it, but she almost never dreamed. She winced. No level of efficient thinking could be achieved with _that_ staring at you. But there were probably a lot of procedures and paperwork about moving a foreign corpse, especially a murder victim.

So she did the only sane thing and covered Volgerr with the Invisibility Cloak.

"Oddly appropriate," observed Dumbledore, rising from his torpor. "The Deathly Hallow meant to _hide_ _from_ death's view, now _hiding_ death _from_ view."

"True," Hermione agreed. "I hadn't thought about that."

"No?"

"No," she answered, shrugging. "I only saw something I didn't want to see, and a Cloak that makes things invisible. It seemed straightforward enough."

Dumbledore let out something like a chuckle.

"Azkaban hasn't changed you," he commented.

"I don't think that's quite true," she joked, making herself levitate a few inches off the ground.

"Ah, yes… the _little trick_ ," said Albus. "I understand a Dementor taught you? Of course, that's how Tom learned… I should have guessed."

"Oh, don't blame yourself. No wizard is immune to missing the obvious."

He stared at her.

"Don't look at me," she answered his unspoken retort. "I'm a violin, remember?… Really, I'm more surprised that the _Turban_ ever thought to ask."

"Perhaps he never did," supposed Dumbledore. "It may be that the Dementors offered to give him their secret, as a token of goodwill, when they first forged their alliance."

" _There_ 's the Albus who discovered the Twelve Uses of Dragon's Blood and became Supreme Mugwump of the I.C.W.," Hermione cheered with exaggerated glee. "…At the end of the day, it's really the two of us standing up for common sense, isn't it. Just the two of us."

The Headmaster didn't answer, his gaze lingering in the direction of Volgerr's invisible body.

"…So," said a sobered Hermione. "What are we going to do about this?"

"…I'm sorry? Do _what_ about…?"

"About _this_ ," she emphasized, waving her arms emphatically. "This entire _mess_. This situation is a riddle within an emergency within a vexation. To recap, our problems are: someone wanted Wesley Weasley in the Tournament, and I don't know why. Both that someone, Hedwig, and Helen Monroe found a way to interfere with the Goblet, and somehow intercepted it before you gave it to me. We have three Champions of the Triwizard too many and Madame Maxime is going to make a fuss. One of our students just murdered a Judge of the Triwizard in full view of the entire student body and staff. Said Judge was a foreigner, so we've got a diplomatic incident on our hands, and our Acting Minister right now is a dazed lunatic. _And_ lest I forget, speaking of diplomatic incidents that could spark a worldwide wizarding war, we're going to have to tell the world that Gellert must be released from Nurmengard, brought to a school full of children, and allowed to judge the Triwizard Tournament. I think that about covers it."

Having finished her tirade, Hermione let her shoulders droop and took a deep breath.

There was no other word for Dumbledore's expression in that moment but _crushed_. To his credit, it didn't take him long to pull himself together afterwards.

"Very efficient, Hermione," he said with a sigh. "Let us get to work, I suppose. For a start… you don't know way to tamper with the Goblet? But then—"

"Oh no," she protested, "I didn't cheat the Goblet. _I'_ m the _real_ Hogwarts Champion. Wesley and Monroe are the cheaters."

"Truly? But, Hermione — your freedom relied on this — how did you ensure —"

"Oh, a simple matter of understanding showmanship," she explained, a little thrilled as she finally shared the insight on which she had sat for several weeks with someone. "The Goblet's intelligence, however it works, and there your guess is as good as mine, the Goblet's intelligence is that of an idealized Judge. Idealized in that it is impartial, and that it knows _ahead of time_ how the Champions would likely perform."

"Indeed. What is your point?"

"Well, it's been long-established that raw skill isn't all it takes to win full points from a Judge of the Triwizard; completing the task with maximum efficiency could still get you a rather law mark, if, in the process, you provided a dreadfully dull spectacle for the audience. A good Champion — a good sportsman, in general — is not only competent, but enticing, dare I say fascinating. Knowing all of this, I predicted that as a perfectly-balanced Judge, the Goblet would also account for, well, for lack of a better term, showiness."

"Ah…" Dumbledore slowly came around. "Hence your theatrics today. Commitment to make your turn as a Champion as impressive as possible, combined with your extant fame… and as you are no slouch as a sorceress, purely in terms of skill…"

She gave him a smile.

"You have it."

"…Alright then," admitted the Headmaster, "let us take down the question of tricking the Goblet of Fire as one more question mark. And there is one more problem you have not mentioned, or, rather, a way some of our problems intersect."

"Yes?"

"A political matter," he elaborated. "Kindling for Dolores's furnace of slander. You recall what Grindelwald's movement, the one Miss Monroe is so keen to resurrect, intended to?"

"Of course," she answered automatically, as if she had been asked a question in class. "Bring down the Statute of Secrecy in order to install—"

"The reasons matter little to the public," he interrupted her. "But you're right. Now here is the thorny coincidence. You are yourself, my dear, currently awaiting trial for…?"

Once again the words flowed out of her mouth before she could think.

"For deliberately breaking the Statute of… oh, bugger."

"Precisely my point," said the old wizard with a wry smile. "Well, we have collected all of the questions. Now comes the hard part… let us try for some answers."

"Oh, don't worry," the Parselmouth of Gryffindor answered with a wry smile, "I've already got some ideas…"


	72. The Prisoners of Hogwarts

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** _A very pleasant 2019 to everyone! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays. At the very least more than Hermione enjoyed her summer vacation. Though I know some relatives seem hardly better company than Dementors, sometimes. Anyway! Thanks to all who continue supporting the story, especially with Reviews (please send more of those!), and on with the show!_

 **CHAPTER LXVIII: _The Prisoners of Hogwarts_**

It was long past midnight when Hermione left the Great Hall and Professor Dumbledore, but they had successfully hacked together a battle plan. The first step would come tomorrow morning, and the meantime, she just wanted to sleep. It was one of those nights where, had she had her Time-Turner, she would have ruthlessly abused it to get a few hours more of sleep — but alas, her wand, school robes and Time-Turner were still in Ministry custody. She would have to find herself a new wand soon enough.

And in the meantime, she had to give his back to Harry, who had lent it to her when they first met up, a few hours before the ceremony. It was that wand she'd tried with Mr Ollivander, and even if it worked reasonably well, courtesy of its true owner's friendship, it still just didn't feel right. Much like with Hedwig, Ginny, or, to tell the truth, herself, Harry just had a knack for inspiring loyalty. She could feel the holly wand yearning for its master, and she hurried to the Gryffindor dormitories to give it back to him before going to sleep. Hopefully _he_ wouldn't be asleep yet — though with his condition, she wouldn't begrudge him if he was. She could always give it to him the next morning.

She found the Fat Lady already slumbering in her frame and had to gently tap the canvas with the tip of the holly wand to wake her up. Flustered, the painted woman apologized and swung the door open. The Common Room itself was empty except for Maximilian. Maximilian was staring intently at Harry and Ron's Wizard's Chessboard. The little chess-people, usually so full of life, were staring back, standing as still as possible. Suddenly, Maximilian's form collapsed in a puff of smoke, and opposite the chessboard now stood an identical one, with an entire set of pieces, who all looked quite exhausted.

"Hello, Maximilian," Hermione greeted in a hushed voice, mindful of the students who were no doubt asleep. "Working on your inorganic objects, I see?"

"Hmhm," confirmed Maximilian the Chess-People, nodding as one entity and speaking in chorus. "And on being several people at once. I'm not having much luck with _that_ yet, though."

"Ah, you'll get there," she assured him. "You're great. Everything alright?"

"More or less," shrugged the Chess-pieces. "You know I never get too upset about anything. It's an unpleasant feeling, so I avoid it."

"By altering your brain chemistry."

"That's right."

"That still makes me a bit queasy, you know that?"

"That's because you were born with a stable brain, I think," pondered Maximilian. " _I_ used not to have a real brain at all, it only makes that I'd be much less attached to its integrity."

As he spoke through 32 small ivory mouths, the Boggart slowly began melting back into one entity.

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"Oh," said Maximilian the last of checkered board was reabsorbed into a familiar humanoid form. "Also. Minerva was asking after you earlier."

Hermione glanced at her Portrait friend's frame, but it was empty; no Minerva, nor even Luna's demented creation in her place. Just an empty background. She'd probably gone over to visit another portrait. Or just gone for a stroll.

"Huh. Well, thank you for telling me," she told Maximilian, "and good night."

She started walking towards the Fifth-Year boys' dorm room then turned back:

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said to the Chess-pieces. "Good night to _you_ , too."

The White Queen waved at her with a hint of a smile on her features.

* * *

When she entered the room, Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas were already sleeping soundly — it seemed they must have been wearing magical earplugs of some description, as they didn't seem to mind Harry and Ron, who were decidedly _not_ asleep, and were instead talking to each other. Too engrossed in their conversation, they didn't hear her coming in, and, feeling mischievous, she quickened her pace to thrust Harry's wand into his pajamas' pocket before either boy realized she was there.

"Hermione!" Ron blurted out, quite loudly.

Hermione winced and looked at Dean and Seamus, but they hadn't stirred. _Really_ good magical earplugs, then. She'd never seen a shop in Diagon Alley that sold magical earplugs, useful though such a thing would have been. Where had they _gotten_ these?!Setting that phenomenally irrelevant train of thought aside, she focused her attention back to her two friends.

"Hello again, you two."

"You took your time," yawned Ron. "We were waiting for you, you know."

"Thanks for the wand," said Harry, obviously holding back a yawn himself.

"Thank _you,_ " she riposted. "For that _and_ for the Cloak."

"Eh, it was nothing, really," shrugged her ever-selfless friend.

"So," asked Ron. "What were you doing with Dumbledore?"

"Plotting," she stated, with an unabashedly impish look.

"Oh yeah? Plotting what?"

"Oh, I don't know, how to keep Hogwarts open even though a foreign dignitary was just murdered there? How not to let an entire generation of First-Years be forever traumatized? How to prevent a world war once we announce we have to free Grindelwald? H-"

"Ah… right, right, we get the picture," Ron interrupted her.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm babbling. …So yeah, that took a while. By the way, I didn't get to ask, earlier… { _how was your summer, Ron? You_ _have_ _practiced your Parseltongue, Ronald, I hope?_ }"

{ _Yes, yes, I practiced,_ } her red-headed friend hissed with a hint of annoyance. { _And, good, yes. Aside from Harry being… you know._ }

{ _Could we please not talk about… that?_ } said Harry. { _I'm okay, now. I'd rather not discuss that whole… thing._ }

{ _Fair enough,_ } she granted. {… _Except… say! You're still a Snake-Speaker!_ }

{ _Why wouldn't I be?_ } he asked.

{ _Well, the Turban was a Speaker, famously enough, and no Potters ever were,_ } she explained. { _Presumably it was because of the Soul-shard inside you that you were a Speaker, all along. So you_ _could_ _have lost the power when the Soul-shard dislodged itself from you._ }

{ _Aaaah…_ } he understood. { _But, er, you're right. That's weird. If your theory is right, then I shouldn't be a Speaker anymore…_ }

{ _That was only a concern, not a certainty,_ } Hermione clarified. { _It seems the knowledge of Snake-tongue was fully copied from its mind to yours, you weren't just borrowing it. So that's neat. If you'd forgotten it I'd have had to teach you all over again._ }

{ _And trust me, mate,_ } said Ron, { _it's no fun at all._ }

Hermione glared at him.

{ _Even with a great teacher!_ } he hastily corrected himself.

* * *

Hermione's first night in a warm and fluffy bed in over a month was a tremendous delight. She slept soundly, dreaming of flying chess-pieces, handsome shape-shifting gingers, friendly bumblebees — and all without a hint of Death Eaters or Cauldron Inspectors. But the morning was not so kind. Oh, it began innocently enough — she awoke well-rested, and she ate bacon and eggs that could not have tasted any more delicious, coming after weeks of the Dementors' cold, clumsy, and quintessentially insipid cuisine. But the mood was tense — it felt rather like a quiet lull in a time of war, when there was no immediate cause for concern but no one quite dared to try and be happy, even so. The head of the Durmstrang Table was conspicuously empty, and Helen Monroe seemed to radiate dread even more than usual; all but her registered henchpeople avoided her gaze and gave her a wide berth — including other Hufflepuffs.

Professor Dumbledore was as grave as befit a schoolmaster who had just had a pupil commit cold-blooded murder in front of all the other pupils the night before, although Hermione knew him well enough to divine that this was something of an act. Behind his closed features was, yes, some concern, but also excitement — anticipation. Hermione knew the reason quite well. And though Professor Umbridge, of course, didn't, she still occasionally eyed him between two sips of overly sugary tea (hardly surprising; she wouldn't have gotten that far in politics without being good at reading people).

Only once he'd finished all three of the croissants he had chosen for his breakfast did the Headmaster slowly rise from his golden throne, clear his voice, and cast a voice-amplification spell.

"If all students —" he said, "particularly those of the Durmstrang Institute — would please listen… Herr Voglerr has something to say to you, I believe."

For a moment it seemed as though the whole Hall had been jinxed. That is to say that no one moved, no one spoke, and everyone grimaced.

"…Albus," Madame Maxime finally found the courage to say. " _Herr Voglerr is dead._ You… you do remember?"

"Yes, thank you, Olympe, I am not going senile just yet," replied the Hogwarts Headmaster.

(Hermione hoped not, or what would have been the point of having Douglas Wilkes pouring all that Elixir of Life in his morning cocoa? She might even increase the dose a little this year. If there was one good side-effect to the murder of Nicolas Flamel by Barty Crouch Jr., it was that his widow now had a lot of Elixir to spare for good causes, and she was quite willing to have it go to help one of her late husband's most loyal friends.)

" _Mais alors_ …" the French witch thought aloud, "do you mean zat he is a ghost?"

"Oh, more than a ghost," answered a triumphant Dumbledore. "No, no, Herr Voglerr has moved on, bless him. But that does not mean he can't cross over for a little speech in these difficult times. With a little magical help."

" _That's impossible_!" hiccoughed Professor Umbridge, while Mme Maxime seemed too stunned to speak. "One cannot come back from the dead!"

"Erm, hello, best-friend-of-a-person-who-returned-from-the-dead-last-year over here," Ron shouted from the Gryffindor Table, pointing at Hermione.

"Dolores,…Olympe…" the wizard continued. "I would have you not underestimate the Castle Hogwarts and the witchcraft we do here. _Nothing_ is truly impossible."

"You mean to say… zat 'Ogwarts now practices Necromancy?!" shouted Mme Maxime.

" _Dumbledore_!" Umbridge fumed. "Teaching Necromancy is _not_ on the official Ministry-approved _curriculum_! Teaching Necromancy is off-books, off the charts, off, off, off! It's against! The! _Rules!_ "

"Oh, we do not teach it, rest assured," he placated the fiend in fuchsia. "However, we do have a fully-equipped Resurrectorium, complete with a functional Deathly Hallow. We would be remiss not to make use of it. And as Deathly Hallows are eminently covered by the 1902 Ministerial Decree on the Non-Commercial Use of Ancient Artifacts, I think you will find that no rules at all have been broken. _Professor_ Umbridge."

When Hermione, who had been staring at Dumbledore, turned back to see the Cauldron Professor's reaction, the older woman's lips were bleeding and she was fumbling with her wand, trying for a healing spell and shoving Madam Pomfrey away when she tried to help. It took a while for Hermione to figure out that the raging Umbridge had in fact bitten into her teacup.

Thus the shade of Herr Voglerr, summoned according to plan with the Resurrection Stone, was brought to the Great Hall to address the students of all three schools. It was a pity that, for the first official speech by someone brought forth through the Stone, it was such a poor oratorial performance — Voglerr was exactly as meek and as lacking in charisma as his appearance presaged, and being reduced to an incorporeal shade didn't help matters — but he spoke, reassuring them that the fear about death was all a big misunderstanding, that he had been reunited with his beloved great-great-great-grandfather Count Orlok, and that he wouldn't stand for anyone becoming too distraught over the whole "murder" thing.

After some prompting from Dumbledore, he clarified that he was _not_ advocating that anyone commit suicide to get into the Afterlife faster. They would have all the time in the world to enjoy it once they got there the normal way, whereas they should make the most of their limited time on the mortal plane. He also insisted that none of his students were to try to murder or otherwise take revenge upon Helen Monroe.

"Oh!" said the Dark Lady of Hufflepuff, and she seemed genuinely relieved. "No hard feelings, then? I'm forgiven?"

" _I said nothing of the sort,_ " said the Stone-Ghost. "I am discouraging revenge because you are protected by the Incandescent Grail's magic, and I do not want any of mine cursed because they tried to mess with it. I also would _not_ like to see great old Hogwarts closed down because of your actions. But you personally… go to Hell."

"…Ah. Fair enough."

Voglerr then walked — the envy of all the ghosts present, the Stone-Ghost seemed to genuinely _walk_ on the paved floor of the Great Hall, with actual _weight_ to his steps, rather than the ethereal mimicry that other ghosts called 'walking' when they didn't want to just glide as was their nature — walked to the Durmstrang table, where he addressed his students directly, in Esperanto, saying goodbyes and making arrangements. It later came to light than he had named the man who was to be his successor as Headmaster back in Durmstrang, and that he had put Viktor Krum in charge of the Durmstrangers in Hogwarts.

Then he returned to the Gryffindor Table, shook hands with Maxime and Dumbledore, and bowed. Hermione, holding the Resurrection Stone beneath the table, turned it thrice, and the shade dissolved back into its rightful world, gone for good from the land of the living.

"And now, before you head back to class, there is a second visitor here," said Albus. "He too is someone who may frighten you, whose presence may astonish you; I speak, of course, of the Hogwarts Defence Professor Gellert Grindelwald, who, due to recent events, will be staying with us in the flesh for the duration of the Tournament."

With impeccable timing, the doors of the Great Hall opened, to reveal three silhouettes. On either side were two Aurors, recognizable by their dark purple robes and the leather wand holsters at their belts (an impossibly convenient innovation which had never caught on in the rest of the Wizarding World for truly unfathomably reasons). The first was a young woman with short black hair — no, trick of the light, it was… purple? —, a pale heart-shaped face and inexplicably lime green eyes. The other was the tall bald man Hermione had met during the Azkaban incident, Kingsley Shacklebot.

Between them was a very large brass birdcage, mounted on four chariot wheels, and inside it was Gellert Grindelwald, wearing awkward striped prison robes that were a far cry from the understated, but always elegant clothing he had worn last year. After visibly wondering what to do with himself, the old Dark Wizard offered an insincere smile waved at the Great Hall like a child at a board of education already set on expelling him.

" _What is the meaning of this?_ " asked an outraged Dumbledore.

"I think it should be obvious," grinned Umbridge. "We'll have him on Hogwarts grounds if we must. But _Mr_ Grindelwald remains a convicted war criminal and Dark Wizard, and a prisoner. Surely you don't propose that we let him wander free?"

"I— I—" stuttered Dumbledore, visibly torn.

"Never mind, Albus," Grindelwald told him, the wheeled cage slowly moving in the direction of the Head Table. "It's not worth the time to argue. This cage isn't so bad. I can't cast spells out of it, no, but that is fair enough; and as you can see I can drive it where I please. In this way at least it's better than Nurmengard I already."

"Nurmengard… One?"

"The terms of my sentence are that I must remain imprisoned in Nurmengard," explained Grindelwald with a wry smile. "Rather than change the terms, they decided to name my new cage Nurmengard II."

"My idea," she whispered in Harry's ear.

Percy hardly listened to her, but she still had some very useful contacts from her time as Minister Fudge's unofficial political advisor. She had a certain reputation in diplomatic circles as the long prodigy who'd formulate excellent new schemes and ideas for you and let you take credit for them.

Harry chuckled.

By then the Nurmengard II was right in front of the Headmaster, followed at a distance by the two Aurors.

"Hello, Albus."

"Hello, Gellert," answered Dumbledore.

He raised a hand and pressed it against the bars of the moving prison; Grindelwald did the same from within, and for the first time in fifty years their palms touched. They held onto this moment for a while, then let go, each smiling sadly and looking into the other's blue eyes, and Hermione was going to see these two happily married if it was the last thing she did, damn it all.

"That will be quite enough of that," interrupted an impatient Umbridge. "Aurors, take this man to his _quarters_."

The two Aurors looked at her blankly.

" _By which I mean the dungeon,_ " she added, gnashing her pearly-white teeth.

They looked blankly some more.

"Are you telling me that Hogwarts doesn't have a dungeon?!" she asked them. "It's a _castle!_ "

"No," said Snape, snide. "They are telling you that the Hogwarts Dungeons currently serve as the Slytherin Common Room, and have done so for, oh, a great many centuries."

"…Ah. Good point."

"Yes."

"…"

"…Professor! I know where there's another prison inside Hogwarts!" volunteered Hermione. "It's a little hard to find, because the entrance is enchanted, you see, but—"

" _Excellent_ ," Umbridge seized the idea. "Aurors, have Miss Granger take you and the prisoner to this other dungeon. And lock them in it."

 _Lock them in it. Them. …Wait, what?!_

"…I'm sorry!?" Hermione blurted out. "What did you j—"

" _Surely_ you realize, Miss Granger," Umbridge explained with a victorious sugary smile, "that what applies to one prisoner applies to another?"

"B…buh…buh…" she stammered before a smiling Helen Monroe caught her eye, providing a retort, "but what about _her_?!"

"Perhaps _you_ weren't listening, what with thinking yourself above all authority and all that, _Miss Granger_ , but Mr Voglerr stated quite plainly that he didn't want anyone to avenge his murder, nor ten minutes ago."

"If we're playing that game," grumbled Hermione, "I'm pretty sure that Muggle I saved wouldn't want me imprisoned either."

"That's besides the point! _Aurors_! Take her away to—to—"

"The Seventh Floor corridor," she informed the two Aurors. "Opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Misunderstood."


	73. The Room of Wonders

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _If you're curious about the title, observe that Hermione has no idea that the Room of Requirement is called that. So she's free to make up her own name. And, well, a room full of marvels whose entrance is revealed in very specific conditions, it's all very "Ali Baba", isn't it? Anyway, thanks again to all my readers, who are wonderful, and particularly to reviewers, who are more amazing still. Cheerio!_

 **Chapter LXIX: _The Room of Wonders_**

Auror Shacklebolt and his younger colleague were easily convinced that the Secret Hogwarts Prison required walking three times past its location before you could see it. She didn't tell them to think about anything in particular, however, and as she followed them up and down and up and down, she concentrated on a rather _unusual_ request. Grindelwald noticed her intent features, and, having noticed that he'd noticed, she _winked_ at him.

True to form, on the four mages' third go, the Corridor wall yielded a door, a heavy metal one with a conspicuous steel lock. Engraved in large capital letters, leaving no doubt as to this place's nature, were the words:

 _SECRET HOGWARTS PRISON_

 _Don't tell anyone  
_ _It's a secret_

"…Are we sure this is a real thing?" asked a dubious Shacklebolt.

"Seems legit to me, Shacklebot," said the other Auror. "Knowing this place, I'd be more surprised if there _wasn't_ something kooky about its secret prison. Like having a big neon 'This is the secret prison' sign on it."

Shacklebolt accepted this with a shrug and opened the iron door to reveal a small cell with two chairs and dark stone walls.

"…Alright then," he said, waving at the two prisoners to go inside. "In you go, please."

"My pleasure," said Hermione, confidently walking into the cell.

Grindelwald was about to follow her in the Nurmengard II, but was stopped by the female Auror.

"Hang on, Grindo my gringo," she said.

"…What?" asked Grindelwald, clearly debating whether to complain about the improvised nickname.

"Oh, don't worry, you're gonna like this part, I think," she told him. "You can go out of the birdcage, for as long as you're in the cell."

"Really? But — the terms of my sentence —"

"That's as far as your permanent incarceration is concerned, Mr Grindy-Waldo," she elaborated.

"That's — that's not actually my—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," she granted, "and my partner's not The Shacklebot 3000, and Purple Bushflower over there isn't actually called that, but I prefer my versions, y'know? As I was saying, the sentence passed upon you grants that you may be moved to temporary holding cells when convenient, as long as they're not upgraded to your permanent residence, meaning you can't sleep there. Meaning don't decide to take a nap here or you're losing Secret Prison privileges, got that? But as long as we're just locking you two up in here in the _daytime_ , there shouldn't be any trouble."

"No need to thank me," Hermione told the German wizard in a singsong voice.

"Of course," interjected Shacklebolt, "you must understand that if you're in _here_ , you can't be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts. You are, by necessity, laid off the position."

"That was inevitable, I'm afraid," shrugged Grindelwald. "Riddle's curse holds true."

"Riddle?"

"Ah, I'm sorry…" he apologized. "You would know him as… the Dark Lord? He Who Must Not Be Named? The Leader of the Death Eaters?"

"Ah… you mean the Crimson Heir?" said the female Auror, her face lighting up in recognition.

"What? No! That's a completely different _person_!" protested Hermione, rolling her eyes. "That's Barty Crouch Junior!"

"…Are you sure?" asked Shacklebolt, blinking rapidly. "I thought… wait, isn't Lord Vo… Ve… the Dark Lord's true name… isn't that an anagram of Bartemius Crouch? Something like that? I thought I recalled…"

 _See, Wizarding World? That's what happened when you refuse to call people by their names just because they're scary._

"Ugh!" groaned Hermione. "We'll talk about this later. Just lock us up already."

"That's… rather an unusual demand," observed Shacklebolt. "Oh well. Here goes."

The Auror waved his wand in a complicated pattern over Grindelwald's cage while his colleague did the same on the other side of the artifact, and after a minute's worth of spellcasting, the former Defence Professor was able to walk out of Nurmengard II and into the Secret Hogwarts Prison where he joined Hermione. The door was closed behind him with a telltale locking sound.

* * *

A grim Grindelwald stared at the dingy, moist interior of the cell. At the lack of windows. At the sickly-green light of the one solitary torch. At the two ratty mattresses that stood in lieu of seats and beds.

Then he stared at Hermione.

"What are you _smiling_ about?!" he finally asked.

"Shh."

"Hm?"

"Don't distract me!" she whispered, getting down on her knees to stare at the pavement. "I'm looking for a stone with a big red button on it."

" _Why_? How do you know there's one here, and why do you care?"

"I know there's one because I put it here, and I care because—ahah!"

Having realized that she'd been standing right on top of it, Hermione brushed aside a little moss to reveal a pulsating, scarlet-colored button, about as large and as smooth as a small pebble. She turned to wink at Grindelwald, and pressed the button.

In remarkable silence, a large, man-sized doorway _punched_ itself into the wall in a huge cloud of dust. Without hesitation, Hermione ran through it, soon followed by the German warlock. The latter almost fell off his feet when he realized what had happened. The two mages now stood in an immense room somewhere between the Gryffindor Common Room and Dumbledore's office, filled with books and equipment and comfy couches and desks. Grindelwald stood unblinking, taking the sight in, then staggered wildly through the room, then back to the entrance, where he double- and triple-checked that the cell was still there behind the wall. He stared at the many strange and rare books stacked there, neatly, on the shelves. Finally he looked up and saw the ceiling, the very image of the sky — just the same as in the Great Hall— and then he collapsed into an armchair with a whimper.

"I'm sorry, is it too much?" asked Hermione, trotting to the old man's side and patting his hand. "I had doubts about the enchanted ceiling, I just decided that I may as well do this right."

"Wha…what… what _is_ this?" he asked, steadying his breathing. "Where are we?"

"The Room of Wonders," she announced with a theatrical bow. "Or Headquarters. Or the Wishing Room. I… honestly have no idea whether it has an official name or not. But it's an enchanted room—"

"Yes, I gathered that much," the warlock muttered.

"—a room spelled to turn into whatever you need it to be," she finished, glaring at Grindelwald. "Just walk three times past its spot in the Seventh-Floor corridor, focusing on your requirements, and a gate materializes to whatever kind of room you needed."

"So while the Aurors walked without meaning, you followed, thinking of… of a large room with a decoy prison…" Grindelwald stopped to get an approving nod from Hermione. "Gate… no, this cannot be some sort of portal to existing rooms of the Castle, something so specific couldn't exist already, but then — unmanned Transfiguration? On this scale? What sort of magic is this? _Surely_ you didn't make it yourself. But perhaps Albus…?"

"I don't think so," said Hermione. "Not that he couldn't, if he put his mind to it, I think. But I rather believe the Room of Wonders is old, very old. I know for a fact it was there in the Turban's youth — that would mean the 1940's… long before Albus would have had the authority to add new experimental rooms to the Castle."

"Besides which, he was… rather busy, at the time," Grindelwald added, somewhat guiltily. "With the small matter of defeating me."

"That, too," she agreed. "Anyway, my theory is that this was the work of one of the Founder. If Salazar Slytherin had his Chamber, why shouldn't the others have built secret lairs of their own? I mean, they wouldn't have to. Looking at Slytherins today is enough to venture a guess that the original may just have been the type to build secret lairs wherever he went, regardless of what other people did. But still. Besides, did you know the current Headmaster's Office used to be Godric Gryffindor's? And it too is magically guarded… or it was, until I poked the Gargoyle too many times."

"…What?"

"Don't ask."

"…Well…" Grindelwald thought, dropping the subject to instead ponder her theory. "It's plausible enough… Slytherin and Gryffindor accounted for would leave Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw… Now, let me see — so inherently helpful a Room may be the doing of Lady Helga, but then again, it requires fine Charms work and a knowledge of Transfiguration more fittingly attributed to Lady Rowena… Truly, I do not know. …I don't suppose it matters very much."

"Not at present," Hermione granted conversationally, "but I _will_ be investigating that further, you know."

"I'm sure you will," chuckled the former Defence Professor. "Hrm… Thank you, either way — for telling me about all this. I… I'm not sure I deserve such trust."

"Oh, don't give me that," she said and rolled her eyes. "Honestly, you're worse than Albus."

"Yes, I am," he nodded, mournful.

"Wh-I didn't mean it _that_ way!…" Hermione groaned. "You see, this is precisely it. Will you, and Albus, and Professor Snape, and Harry for that matter, just stop being guilty and forlorn all the time? It's really distracting!"

"But… but I have much to be guilty _about_ … more than any other man in the world!…" Grindelwald argued helplessly.

"You've done your mourning," she asserted in return. "Fifty years of it. _That_ is more sitting-about feeling guilty than could _possibly_ be healthy. As for being the guiltiest man in the world, er, tell that to the Turban."

"Riddle? That fool killed far fewer than died because of me and my madness, Hermione," said Gellert.

"Motives matter too," she countered. "Buried beneath all your bias and all your flawed ethics was a will to do good. If I could get you to wear the Sorting Hat, I'm _pretty_ sure he would deem you a Gryffindor."

"If I were to wear the Sorting Hat, I would drown it in my regrets," Grindelwald moaned.

Hermione stared at the broken old man in prison robes, at his watery blue eyes that were so like Dumbledore's, only a deeper shade of blue, and well-worn by innumerable tears. She tried to place why the view of it irritated her so, suddenly. She felt that curious mix of sympathy and anger she usually felt when looking at —

"Elf," she spat.

"…I'm sorry?"

"House-Elf," she repeated. "You might as well be one, if you're going to sit around being crushed by your woes. It doesn't matter how close trouble looms, how heavy the burden of your past gets, how much you regret that things aren't some other way. If you have any kind of a heart, you need to get over all of that. To let the darkness consume you like that… it's worse than any defeat or setback, it's worse than dying, even — I've seen _ghosts_ with more _spirit_ than you're showing right now! Get up! Come alive! Alright, so you caused a small matter of a world war — but that was half a decade ago. I daresay no matter what happens, it's not a mistake you're ever likely to make again. Regret—"

"Regret is my duty," said Grindelwald, sepulchral.

"Regret is your prison!" she almost shouted in reply. She was going to make this sad mummy a productive member of society, damn it all, or die trying, probably from overexerting her lungs. "Regret is all fine and good to get people to realize what they were doing wrong, and make sure they don't do it again, but to regret as such — it's not doing any kind of good to the universe, _regretting_. Regret is a preamble. Purging yourself of the sadness and the guilt, so that you're free to find happiness and help others to do the same. When were you doing the most good in the world, Gellert Grindelwald? Moping around Nurmengard, alone and forgotten? Or last year, when you taught the new generation of wizards and witches to defend themselves against evil? When you actually _went out and did a thing_?"

Grindelwald looked at her sadly, from the depths of his rather exceptionally deep and fluffy armchair. She held his gaze, for seconds and seconds. He sighed.

"You don't understand," he said at last. "How could you? Hermione… I am not a good man. I am a very, very wicked one. Just barely human enough to realize how lacking I am in every respect. To see how much of a monster I am inside."

"And I don't believe that," she answered simply.

Grindelwald opened his mouth, but she shot him a _glare_ and he recoiled. Hermione, for her part, took a few steps back, closed her eyes, and _concentrated_ as only a trained Occlumens could concentrate. This went on for about ten seconds, and then there was a faint 'POP' and a lot of confused shouting.

The shouting was from the Sorting Hat, who had materialized a few dozen feet up in the air, then dropped neatly onto Grindelwald's head. He seemed rather bemused by this turn of events.

" _WHAT TH—_ will someone kindly expl—I was just minding my own—WHAT AM I DOING HERE?!" was the general gist of the Hat's imprecations.

"Yes, hello to you too, Hat," Hermione said distractedly.

"…Oh… it's you," the Sorting Hat quieted down, getting its fivefold personality under control. "I should have known. Well then, Miss Granger, what, precisely, am I doing here? …For that matter, where is _here_?"

"The Room of Wonders," Hermione answered. "I assume you know about it? Seventh floor, gives you whatever you ask for?"

"So you've found it… we're all doomed," the Hat whimpered. "Yes, of course, I know about it. I do contain the memories of its maker, after all. …Alright then. Explain yourself. Why did you ask it to take me here?"

"Is that what you did?" Grindelwald asked Hermione, lightening up. "You can control the Room further from the _inside_? You can _ask it to summon objects from the outside world_?!"

"Only with a lot of focus," Hermione shrugged, "and I can only summon preexisting objects from inside the Castle. But… yes."

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW POWERF—"

"Yes, I do, thank you," she cut him off. "So. Hat. To answer your question… you're her to Sort Gellert Grindelwald."

"I'm sorry?"

"We were having a little discussion, you see," she explained. "He thinks he's inherently evil. I think he's just a Gryffindor with a complex. You're the expert."

"So I'm supposed to… Sort him, then?" the Hat asked, skeptically. "As though he were any common student?"

"Yes… If you're not afraid," said Grindelwald, "of what you will find."

"Now you listen here, young man," huffed the Sorting Hat, "two-fifths of me have indulged in crimes you wouldn't even _dream_ of committing. I am the Sorting Hat of Hogwarts, and I am nearly a thousand years old. It would take… well, it would take rather a lot to cow me. Now let me see — let go of your Occlumency, would you? I'm going in."

The Hat's cloth features knit into a frown while Grindelwald seemed to lose track of his surroundings, focused on his inner conversation with the Hat.

"Hm… hmmm…" - the Hat muttered aloud. "Hmm… hmmm… _my_ , that is a _lot_ of regrets."

Grindelwald's eyes found Hermione.

"I told you so…" he said.

"…But then again! What a mind!" said the Hat. "Clever, yes, and caring deep within, or you wouldn't regret quite so much… but I would be remiss to make you a Raven nor Badger, no, dear me, no. Hm… hmmm…"

"Oh, just say it," groaned Grindelwald. "We both know it cannot be anything but Sl—"

"Slytherin, you say? Slytherin?" repeated the Hat, as though he had never thought of the possibility. "Hm… it's a possibility. You are certainly cunning. As for ambitious… you did use to be ambitious. These days, not so much. Either way — even that pales in front of your courage and daring… of your wish to see the world born anew into a better, fairer place… It burns bright within you, this hope, this determination, even now. This kind of fortitude, it's a great and rare power — like all great gifts, it can be, it has been, misapplied to devastating effects, but you have it, nonetheless. You must prove yourself worthy of these higher aspirations, and you may yet… as a GRYFFINDOR!…"

Content with its decision, the Hat smiled smugly and went silent. Grindelwald slowly took him off his head and set it down on the well-polished desk that stood next to his chair. The look on his face could only be likened to that of the Muggle-born First-Years who saw the Castle Hogwarts for the very first time. He raised a bony hand to his forehead and emitted a high-pitched sigh that was almost a wail.

Hermione grinned at him. And, well, she couldn't _not_ say it:

" _I_ told _you_ so!"

* * *

For minutes on end, Hermione stared at Grindelwald with that same, slowly-waning victorious grin; but the wizard, lost in thought, clearly needed some time yet to digest his Hat-enabled epiphany. After sending the Sorting Hat back from whence he came, she weakly pointed at one of the taller bookshelves and at the purple couch resting directly against it, and murmured:

"I'll just — be over there if you need me."

Then she settled into the truly very comfy sofa and scanned the shelf. She hadn't picked it at random, of course. She'd asked the Room for an _ordered_ library, and so it was _this_ particular bookcase contained whatever books on wizarding mythology and folklore could be found in the Castle. Reforming magical dictators was all well and good, but she had a Triwizard Tournament to prepare for, and Professor Dumbledore _had_ said that the various Trials would draw inspiration from old magical lore.

So then, what might the First Task be? What was the oldest of the old wizarding stories? That riddle was probably easy for the wizard-raised Monroe, Krum and Delacour. (As for Hedwig… Hermione really didn't know how she'd gotten in or what she was planning to do.) But being Muggle-born, she knew very little of the Wizarding World's popular culture. So the Triwizard was a challenge to her, a scholarly challenge.

She loved those.

Resisting the urge to whistle, she settled on Professor Bagshot's _The Decline of Pagan Magic_. It may not have the full answers, but it was a good enough place to start, since it dealt in the old religions of the wizards, the ones they'd discarded once wizards realized they'd just picked up the whole idea of 'gods' from Muggles, who had in turn derived their legends of these supernatural people of great power from, well, wizards themselves. As such, it ought to contain its fair share of old tales and obscure legends.

Had she had her wand, she would have spelled it to her, to practice her Summoning Charm in 'field conditions', such as they were. But she didn't have a wand for the moment; the Dementors could be pressed to look the other way while she flew to Britain, once she'd reassured 'Peter' that the Ministry couldn't send her back anyway… but giving her back her wand, Time-Turner and other personal effects, all against the Ministry's direct orders — that would have been a notch too far.

Well, that looked like an excellent opportunity to work on her wandless magic, then.


	74. Return to Diagon Alley

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This is one of those chapters that somehow wouldn't let itself be written, time and again, then suddenly all came gushing out and ended up longer than I meant them to be. So long, in fact, that I had to postpone one of the scenes I meant for this chapter to the next one. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this new adventure! Where mysteries are introduced even as others are resolved, but isn't that always the way of things? (Incidentally, I would like to note that while you have every right to imagine my characters however you like, it is very rewarding to imagine the character introduced towards the end of this chapter with the voice and mannerisms of Mark Gatiss in any of his "smooth-talking, stuffy British gentleman" roles, much like I earlier advised you to read Barty Crouch Jr in this fic as David Tennant.)_

 **Chapter LXX: _Return to Diagon Alley_**

"I'm sorry, you… seem to be having a spot of trouble?"

Relaxing for the first time in ten minutes, Hermione let the magic she had been building up between her hand fizzle out and turned around. There stood Professor Gellert Grindelwald, who was apparently done reevaluating his life choices.

"Yes. …You're in, then?" she asked.

"Erm, yes, you could say that," said the former Defence Professor, adjusting his shit collar. "Quite. _Ach… so_. You're trying to learn wandless magic, I gather?"

She nodded.

"I am," she confirmed, "but I haven't been having much luck. This is the third time I build up the magic and I focus on what I want to do and then I release the magical energy yet it just kind of disperses without doing what I asked it to do in the first place _and it's really annoying!…_ "

Grindelwald looked at her with a gleam of amusement in his eyes.

"Alright, I've got… two pieces of advice for you," he said. "Firstly, _breathe_. Secondly,… let's first establish precisely _what_ kind of wandless magic we are attempting, hm?"

Hermione gave the teacher a blank look.

"You — you do know there are several kinds, yes?" asked Grindelwald, uncertainly.

A mortified Hermione was quick to shake her head.

"Ahah… hm…" Grindelwald said, rubbing at his chin thoughtfully, "well, I suppose it's hardly the sort of thing one reads about in most books; it concerns far too few people… Still, it's not every day one teaches magical theory to Hermione Granger. Well. The first kind of wandless magic, the deeper kind… the kind you've seen Albus and I use on occasions, the one I think you thought you were emulating…"

"Yes?"

"That's the _difficult_ one," finished Grindelwald. "It requires… _Gefühl_ — what's the word? Feeling… instinct. Yes. An instinct, a feel for magic. All magicals have it, a little bit at least; some Muggles, too, can feel magic though they can't harness it, I have learned. Wandless magic of this sort… deep magic… it is not only to feel the magic around you, emanating from you, but to seize control of it with your mind, not by manipulating in the learned ways of the spell or artifact but true — _Nutzung_. Do… do you see what I mean?"

"I think I do, yes," she told him. "It… it sounds more complex than I first guessed, when you put it like that."

"Doesn't it now? Oh, it's not that you have no _Zaubergefühl_ at all, you wouldn't have gotten this far to begin with if it were so, but… This sort of wandless might is not something you can pick up in a day, or even a year, unless you're born with a gift for it. You can try to study your feelings during Accidental Magic, if you can recall them, and work from there; you can, if you are a Legilimens, look within the mind of a tried practitioner, and get the technique straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak… but it may take years before you can do anything with it."

Hermione's shoulders drooped lower and lower as Grindelwald's little improvised lecture went on.

"On the other hand," he went on, and she perked up at that, "there are also _wandless spells_ to consider. Not to control magic at the root, but to dispense with your wand still as you practice spells… _pretend_ you have a wand, use hand gestures for wand motion. _That_ is — well, it's harder than wanded magic, of course it is, and less efficient; but it's moderately learnable. This is what you should be attempting to learn. So let's see. The Levitation Charm, was it?"

She nodded.

Grindelwald took her right hand and she let him put it in position like a puppet's; he left her with arm outstretched and her open palm facing _The Decline of Pagan Magic_. He let go and she held the position, though it was hardly comfortable.

"Very good," he nodded, for all that it was his doing so far and not her. "Now focus your mind as if you were casting the spell — say the incantation — and then _swish_ and _fl_ —"

Automatically, having mastered the Levitation Charm, oh, a very long time ago, she focused and _swished_ and _flicked_ —

" _Wingardium Levio—_ "

There was a big _bang_. A powerful gust of wind blew Hermione to the ground, knocking over the sofa, and when she looked up, the bookshelf was a ruined mess. With, sitting atop the pile of rubble, the one book that was in the exact same spot she'd left it. _The Decline of Pagan Magic_.

"No, no, _no_!" reproached a moody Grindelwald, wiping dust off his striped jacket. "Don't rush into things before I'm finished explaining, will you? Just because you _think_ you know! _Think_ , for God's sake, girl. _Think!_ … What did you do wrong?"

Hermione stared at her hand, at the smoking ruin of a bookshelf. What could—

"—Oh," was all she could say as it dawned on her.

" _Explain_ ," ordered Grindelwald.

"I'm not using a wand," she droned, "so it's not the wrist I should swish and flick, but the elbow, so that my forearm and hand act _as_ the wand."

"Right," Grindelwald nodded sharply, "well, at least you learn quickly. Yes, of course you do. Let's try ag…" His eyes fell on the remains of the bookcase, "well, I think I'll need to repair this… thing… before we can do this over, hm. I _think_ I can manage a wandless _Reparo_ … hm… I can't promise anything; it _has_ been nearly fifty years…"

"There's no need," she interrupted. "The Room will provide."

The Professor hadn't yet had time to ask what she meant that she was already focusing her mind on _demanding_ the bookcase's restoration from the Room. It was a little harder to manipulate the Room of Wonders from the inside, but not _that_ hard — it was actually quite cathartic at the moment, since it felt rather like wandless magic made easy. Soon the bookcase patched itself back together as if rewinded in time, and was good as new.

Grindelwald stared at the repaired furniture and books with wide eyes.

"What the… _mein Gott_ … you can control it from the _inside_ , and so finely too?!"

"Yup."

* * *

So Hermione tried again. And blew up the bookcase again, because her fingers hadn't been steady enough. Then she set it on fire, because she hadn't timed the incantation properly. Then she made it grow a big scaly rubber tail.

That was another reason why wandless magic was not more well-known or widely taught — it was bloody _dangerous_. She thanked the powers that be that her earlier attempt at an even more elusive form of wandless magic hadn't caused the whole flying Castle to crash, or some other dire thing.

In the end however, after considerable prompting and encouragement from Professor Grindelwald, she did manage to levitate _The Decline of Pagan Magic_ into her hands; it was, by then, almost noon, and she was getting peckish.

"Gellert? How would you like to have some lunch?"

"I don't believe I am permitted to go to the dining hall, I'm afraid," he answered.

"I was proposing no such thing."

"But…" he questioned. "This Room — surely — surely it cannot violate the Exceptions to Gamp's Law, can it?"

"No, no, nothing so extravagant," she laughed.

Grindelwald relaxed a little. Perhaps he should not have. Because Hermione then proceeded to add:

"I was just suggesting we go to Diagon Alley."

* * *

"Alright. _So._ " said Grindelwald, still on the verge of a cardiac fit as he contemplated the piece of enchanted furniture that had materialized in front of him. "Even setting aside that this Room can _produce Vanishing Cabinets at will_ —"

"What? Nah," she reassured him. "That's just me using to summon things from the Castle. The Vanishing Cabinet already existed. I don't _think_ the Room can create _that_. At the very least — I tested it — it can't make wands out of nothing. Which is actually another reason we really should get going to the Alley. I don't think the Ollivanders do house calls."

In a rather cartoonish display of annoyance — this man was just _so_ melodramatic — when she thought about it, that was probably part of what had endeared him to Albus — Gellert was now stomping on the ground with his right boot.

"Yes! Yes! _That_! About that!" he screamed. " _How_ could that _possibly_ be _legal_ for us to do?!"

"Even if it wasn't," Hermione answered coolly, "getting in our way would be running the risks that come with going against the Goblet of Fire. But in point of fact, it's legal according to the Ministerial Decree of 1624 on Mandatory Lunch Breaks, wherein workers are granted special permission to go to any restaurant or inn within walking distance of their workplace, even should these areas be otherwise out of bounds to them."

Grindelwald looked at her with almost tangible confusion.

"And before you ask," she went on, "the reason this applies to us is the 1837 Ministerial Decree on the Classification of Prisoners, which renders prisoners incarcerated elsewhere than in Azkaban equivalent to menial workers. As I understand it, this had to do with a failed attempt to create and regiment taxes in the British Wizarding World which fell under when someone crunched the numbers and realized that the entire system was running perfectly smoothly on bribes and what wasn't broken needn't be fixed. But the Decree remained. Ergo, to the Leaky Cauldron and its quality cuisine with us!"

And before Grindelwald could argue, she leapt into the Cabinet.

"After me!"

* * *

The young witch and the old wizard soon phased by the Cabinet's magic into the limbo realm of neverwhen andneverwhere; both seasoned practitioners of travel outside of time and space, they were careful not to linger there for long or pay any attention to their surroundings, though Hermione, in their brief second there, couldn't help hear strange, beckoning voices, strangely familiar ones, and — and feel a sort of sense of _doom_ —

But it lasted mere instants. They soon rematerialized inside the Vanishing Cabinet's twin. The one that should have been inside Borgin & Burke's in Knockturn Alley.

Hermione walked out expecting to see the oily, and, no doubt, surprised, face of Charles Borgin.

Well, it wasn't.

Not unless he had recently changed gender and turned into a tall fair-haired woman with a _remarkable_ Slytherin sneer.

"Hello, Narcissa Malfoy," said Hermione, who didn't feel that the inexplicable turn of events was any reason not to be moderately polite.

"What are _you_ doing here," spat Narcissa, not phrasing it as a question so much as a self-evident reproach.

"I honestly have no idea," she answered, deadpan. "Oh, this is Gellert, by the way. Gellert Grindelwald."

"How do you do," said Grindelwald with a little bow, clearly enjoying the situation.

Narcissa Malfoy mouthed a few incoherent words silently, then clearly decided to ignore the German wizard's presence, and, looking intently at Hermione alone, she swallowed her bile and gave an extremely Slytherin sort of smile — not unlike Professor Umbridge's, only ever so slightly more convincing, and also somewhat less likely to make you want to strangle its wearer.

"Ah, I believe I understand," she said in the sing-song voice of a party host, even throwing in a fashionable chuckle. "You must have come in through the companion piece to this wonderful little trinket I purchased from Charles the other day. Oh, you simply _must_ tell me where it leads, you _will_ do me this favor, won't you?"

"First: hahaha, no, never in a million years," she replied. "Second: do I understand that Charles Borgin, of his own free will, and against our explicit, and monetary, agreement, consented to part with this Vanishing Cabinet?"

"Of course," answered Narcissa, finding her sneer again. "You see, I _wanted_ it. Charles would never say no to me."

"But… but he wouldn't go against _me_ , would he!?…" spluttered Hermione.

"Oh, I think you'll find things have changed, little _mudblood._ " (Hermione was taken aback at the way she suddenly spat the insult) "Like all your kind, you were only ever powerful by standing on the shoulders of your betters, and now, well… without dear, poor, deluded Cornelius — you're nothing to be afraid of, my dear. You're _nothing_."

A frowning Hermione shut her eyes for a moment, resisting a powerful urge to punch the Malfoy in the face. A common reaction to Malfoys everywhere, but it just wasn't the civilized way. She instead focused on formulating a witty reply. Several seconds of trying to come up with a scathing remark about pureblood housewives later, she opened her eyes, saw something out the corner of her eyes, and immediately felt very stupid.

So she said:

"…Remember who is standing next to me, and tell me that again."

Grindelwald smiled — just a little friendly grin — and saved a hand to say hello.

Narcissa Malfoy looked like she had just swallowed something that was much too spicy, and was, also, an angry porcupine.

"Would you be so kind as to show us the way out, Mrs Malfoy?" asked Grindelwald, polite as can be. "We have rather urgent business in Diagon Alley."

* * *

As Hermione and Gellert walked out of Malfoy Manor, flanked by a Narcissa Malfoy who was silent as the grave, they passed a great black wrought-iron gate. It seemed enchanted, shivering as they passed, and Narcissa told it _shush_ to make sure it didn't say anything. Hermione resolved to explore this later.

The moment they set foot outside, the Manor behind there became entirely invisible, and they were stuck on a lonely dirt road surrounded by a gloomy forest. In Wiltshire. Miles and miles from Diagon Alley.

"…Oh, fantastic," groaned Hermione.

"Can we not simply call for the Knight Bus?" suggested Grindelwald.

"Gellert, how does one call the Knight Bus?"

"By raising one's w—oh."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"Well, I suppose we'll just have to fly," she concluded.

"Don't be stupid," said Grindelwald. "We don't have any broomsticks."

"No, not fly on broomsticks," insisted the girl. " _Fly_."

And she pulled her magic together to lift her upwards into the skies. She shot like a rocket and stopped abruptly about six feet in the air.

"Like this," she said, then let herself drift back down like a balloon.

* * *

Not being one of the most powerful warlocks alive for nothing, Grindelwald got the hang of unsupported flight rather quickly. Really, once you knew the trick, it wasn't hard. And the trick wasn't even that hard to figure out! The basic magical structure was very much like _Wingardium Leviosa_ , if you could cast the one you could certainly practice the other; and as for the secret component, the one that had consistently stumped magical researchers for so long — frankly, even if it _hadn't_ been staring wizards in the face for a century thanks to the Muggles (who knew how _they'd_ found out), then they should have figured it out from the fact that only the most well-fed of Dementors could fly.

The secret was, funny enough, to think a happy thought as you kicked off.

* * *

Grindelwald, the proud owner of a fantastic photographic memory, had spent distressingly large amounts of time in his youth poring over maps of England (for purposes which, Hermione gathered, had little to do with touristic enthusiasm). Hence, the sorcerous centenarian effortlessly guided her from Wiltshire to central London, where a few Muggles spotted them, causing quite a stir. They didn't feel too bad about this, since both were already serving prison sentences for breaking the Statute of Secrecy in the first place. Finally, they landed in front of the _Leaky Cauldron_ and walked in as inconspicuously as possible.

Unfortunately, it is very hard to be inconspicuous when you are, respectively, a glowing-purple-skinned child celebrity, and the most wanted wizarding criminal of all time. Heads turned, conversations stopped dead, spoons were dropped — except for one , enchanted, belonging to an unshaven youngish man with black hair, who was too absorbed in reading a Muggle physics book to notice their entrance. (Hermione liked him.)

The bald wizard at the counter gave Grindelwald a surprised, then hostile look, but Hermione was quick to placate him:

"It's alright, Tom, Gellert is with me."

Upon which Tom gave a polite little nod and asked if, perhaps, they wanted passage into Diagon Alley. Clever, observant little man who had spotted their lack of a wand. Really, you _had_ to love Tom.

"Well, that would be most kind, but not just yet," she replied. "We were rather intent on having lunch, first. On my tab."

"You have a tab here?" asked Grindelwald in a whisper as they walked to a free table.

"I do now," she answered in a breath.

* * *

After a rather delightfully filling repast (but weren't they always, with a magical cook worth their salt?), the two mages took Tom's offer to wander into Diagon Alley, and, conspicuously ignoring the gawking passersby, they made their way to Ollivanders'. They came in to find not Garrick Ollivander, but a somewhat younger wizard (though he still had to be at least seventy) with well-trimmed gray sideburns. Unlike Garrick's, _his_ also steel-gray eyes were shielded by a small pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.

"How do you do," said the man with a small bow. "Roderick Ollivander. And you are?"

"Gellert Grindelwald. So you must be — Garrick's son?" recognized Grindelwald. "He told me about you. Long ago. I believe you were… five, at the time. Four? I forget."

"I'm Hermione Granger," Hermione introduced herself, extending a hand for Roderick to shake. "Very pleased to make your acquaintance. Is your father here?"

The younger Ollivander adjusted his spectacles with just a hint of surprise, then gave a sharp nod and said, smooth as can be:

"I'm afraid Father is quite busy in the workshop. The wands have to come from somewhere, do they not? I on the other hand am at your full disposal. I assure you the proverbial apple does not fall far from the tree, although I must admit there is some truth to the fact that applewood wands cannot be used for the baking of apple pies."

The wandmaker chuckled lightly as though he had said something delightfully witty. For all they knew, perhaps it _was_ the height of humor to someone who knew wandlore.

Nevertheless, they could only bring themselves to a very forced little grin, and Ollivander was not fooled. He coughed and changed the subject:

"So then, I presume you have… lost… broken?… your respective wands, and are in need of replacements?"

"To be more precise, they were taken from us," said Hermione, "but this is broadly correct, yes."

"Very well then," said Roderick. "Who shall go first?"

Grindelwald, ever the gentleman, instantly motioned for her to go first. She gave him a grateful nod and walked forward.

"Very good, Miss Granger," said Roderick with a smile. "So then. What was the constitution of your previous wand? It is no guarantee that the one that shall choose you today will be anything like it, but it is a start."

"Eleven inches," she answered from memory, "walnut and dragon heartstring."

The aging Ollivander nodded and sifted through the rows of his father's shelves to find a wand of such description. It was really astonishingly similar to Hermione's old one. But when she touched it and gave it a wave, it emitted a sort of whiny coughing sound and spat out a few darkish wisps of smoke.

"Ah, I was afraid this would happen," apologized Ollivander, taking the misfit wand back from her. "Some wands do not always take kindly to being used as replacements for a lookalike. Quite understandable, really. So then… hm… Let me think… You know, it's quite fortunate that you're such a public figure; it gives me a very good idea what to look for… may I suggest this?"

He offered a very long, very thin wand of light wood.

"Ash and Phoenix Feather, fifteen inches," he said. "Destined to the courageous, not easily swayed in their beliefs. Particular affinity for Healing and Transfiguration."

Though she was unconvinced by that latter part (her strength lay more in Charms than Transfiguration), she took the wand and waved it around, first meekly, then with broader motions, then in all sorts of complex elliptic and helicoidal patterns. She got absolutely no reaction whatsoever.

"Let's call this a no, I'm afraid," said Ollivander, taking back the ash wand. "You — you have practiced… _wandless_ magic recently, haven't you?"

Hermione nodded guiltily. This did not sound like the kind of thing that it was polite to advertise to a wandmaker.

"Ah. Oh, I won't think any less of you for it, nor my father," Ollivander was quick to reassure her. "Only — ash, being the… stubborn wood, is easily offended if its prospective master uses such techniques. And goes unresponsive like this. Ahem… hm… perhaps — this? Beech and dragon heartstring. A wand of wisdom and subtlety. Artistic."

" _Subtlety?_ " she repeated, not particularly hopeful.

She gave the beech wand a wave and instantly dropped it; it was burning hot.

"Ow!"

"Overcharged with magical energy," diagnosed Ollivander. "Too much too quickly. No, no, this will not do."

Hermione, who was growing annoyed, drummed her fingers on the nearest shelf as she waited for the wandseller to produce his next candidate. Before he could do so, however, she felt — she felt a sort of —

— the next thing she knew, one of the wands she had been distractedly running her fingers against had jumped into her hand.

"Mr Ollivander?"

"Hm?"

"Mr Ollivander, I think this one _likes_ me."

The tall man looked up from the trunk in which he'd been foraging, and, seeing the new wand in her hand, ran up to her with a big childlike grin:

"Oh! Splendid! Splendid! Marvelous! It's so rare to see such an instant reaction — let me see."

He tried to take the wand from her hand, but it slipped out of his fingers, and, as if attached to Hermione's hand with an elastic band, returned there on its own power.

"Hohoho! Father will be so furious to have missed this!" laughed the wandmaker. "And it's one of his, too — as you can see, it's pine, the wood of the creative and independent, ten and a half inches, rather thin — the core is unicorn hair, of course, only unicorns are so — territorial. Splendid. Positively splendid!"

Hermione wasted no time in giving her newfound wand a try and conjured some Bluebell Flames. It was clear that the fizzy little wand was eager to please, as the Flames came out much larger and brighter than she'd expected, and with a purplish tinge, too.

"Splendid! Positively splendid. Come back tomorrow and show this to Father, I beg you, he'll never leave me in peace otherwise."

"…I'd be glad to," she answered. "Speaking of which, would it bother you if I paid you on that occasion? It occurs to me that we neglected to go to Gringotts first."

"By all means, whatever you desire," granted Ollivander. "…And now, Mr Grindelwald, to us."


	75. Goblin Diplomacy

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _We're back! Grindelwald's wand, Bogrod, and the Goblin King again… plus some enigmatic goings on, and some answers to questions raised in the last few chapters! Did any of you see 'it' coming? At any rate, people looking forward to Triwizard action needn't worry; it is at the most only one more chapter before the First Task. In the meantime, thanks for your support, and please review!_

 **Chapter LXXI: _Goblin Diplomacy_**

" _What_ is _that?!_ "

"My new wand," said Gellert, making doe eyes at the _object_.

""But it's—it's—"

Hermione struggled to find the words to express how horribly, how fascinatingly, how very utterly _unwandlike_ was the object which her friend was now stroking like a kitten, eliciting, God help her, a satisfied _purr_ from said object. It was like a wand only in that it was a more or less linear, handheld magical instrument. But it was in truth shaped like a comically large corkscrew — and bright red. It had a handle of a sort, gold-plated and about three inches out of the thing's fourteen.

"Red and gold," the wizard said. "You _have_ to admit it's an _extremely_ Gryffindorish wand!"

"That much is undeniable," granted Hermione, more amused than not. "If only because you'd have to be very, very brave to wave it around in public. …What is it made of?"

"The stuff of dreams…" answered Gellert with overplayed dreaminess, before adding, cheerful: "And also, sweet viburnum, with a core of Tuskwhale balleen."

"Tuskwhale balleen?! I thought Ollivander only used Phoenix Feather, Unicorn Tail Hair and Dragon Heartstring."

"You're thinking of Ollivander _Senior_ ," her companion explained. "His offspring seems considerably more wont to experimentation. This is one such experiment. In fact, he went so far as to offer me a partial refund if I would be so kind as to report on its performances for the next few months. He blieves that it might do very well for Scourging Charms, for example. Or the Hurricane Curse."

"Of course…" Hermione guessed. "A whirling pattern."

Grindelwald nodded with a giddy, almost childlike smile. So very like Dumbledore… Seeing him like this, it was hard to imagine this was the same man who'd set the world ablaze half a century earlier. It gave her hope. For the Dementors, for the Turban… perhaps even for Crouch Jr., who knew?

Soon they reached Gringotts. Hermione walked into the large marble hall, which was brimming with customers, this early in the day. Her eyes scanned the counters for her favorite account, Mr Carngrip. One reason she liked Carngrip was that he was surprisingly polite for a Goblin, in that he said hello and asked how you were instead of leading with how much money you'd lost in the stock market. A second reason was that he seemed to admire her for starting in business at so young an age. A third reason was that he had dropped not-so-subtle hints that he was part of the Brotherhood of Goblins, an organization which worked behind the scenes to promote Goblin rights; and it was an endeavor of which Hermione wholeheartedly approved.

But today, look as she might, Carngrip's dark green skin and silver-rimmed glasses were nowhere to be found. On the other hand, she did recognize at least two faces: the sallow but human-like skin, and the receding black hair, of Mr Griphook, and the withered, eagle-like features of the elderly Senior Teller, Mr Bogrod. She had had dealings with both, although not particularly friendly; both treated her with the distrust they generally allotted to clever humans, and that represented some considerable amounts of distrust indeed. She could have signed over all her possessions to the Lord President of Gringotts, and still they would have questioned her motives.

Still, they were at least lawful, they were as efficient as any Gringotts Goblin (that, also, was a remarkable amount), and most importantly, as long as she remained in favor with the King, they tried not to antagonize her overtly.

She hadn't yet decided which of the two she should ring, however, when a wildly joyful Grindelwald ran past her, and, pushing confused Gringotts patrons out of his way, cleared a path to Bogrod.

"Ha-haaah!" the old wizard's voice rang. " _Bloody_! Good old Bloody!"

Bogrod, who had been pulled _up_ into a tight hug by the (much taller) wizard, seemed just as confused as the people around him.

"Oh, old boy," continued Grindelwald, "I thought you were _dead_! Hahahah!"

" _Mr_ Grindelwald," said Bogrod with dignified outrage as he managed to slip away from the old man's embrace, falling back on his feet, "you must be mistaken." Bogrod stressed those words. Repeated them. "You _must_ be mistaken."

"Uh?"

"You _must_ be confusing me with another Goblin," continued Bogrod, still with the odd insistence on the word. "The war criminal Rogbod the Bloody, who served in your armies, is _dead_. My name is _Bogrod_. I am, I have always been a Teller here at Gringotts Wizarding Bank. I have never held a wand, or any other forbidden weapon. I have not. You really _must_ be mistaken."

Grindelwald stood there, confused, for a few moments. Then a smile crept over his wrinkled face. He gave 'Bogrod' a knowing, roguish grin and _winked_ emphatically.

"I see… I see," chuckled the wizard. "I see that I must. Must. Eheheh. My mistake. …Well. As you can plainly seen, I have returned to Britain — Teller. I should like to access my vault, please."

"I take it you do not have your key, sir?" harrumphed 'Bogrod'. "We can arrange for you to get a new one, of course. For a fee."

" _Natürlich_ ," said Gellert. "I would never dare to ask for something for nothing, not from you… honorable Teller whom I have never met. Eheheh."

Scowling, 'Bogrod' added:

"Of course, you must first prove your identity to us."

"Oh, come now," pleaded the old man. "You know me well enough on sight, don't you?"

"No. I _can't_. Know you. _Sir_ ," answered the Goblin insistently.

"…Ah, yes. Hmf," was all Grindelwald to say in return, his face scrunched in a childish pout. "Alright. Very well. Lead the way."

"Quite, follow me," said the banker, beckoning his client into a service corridor. "Before anything else, we have got to have you washed with Thief's Downfall."

"Aw, must we _really_?" asked the warlock in precisely the same voice as a child not wanting to wash.

" _Yes_ , strange wizard," snapped the Goblin. "Now come."

* * *

By pure process of elimination, Hermione walked to Griphook.

"I suppose I'll also be needing a new key, and all that goes with it… Right?"

"Wrong," said Griphook, abrupt as ever. "The King wants to see you."

The black-haired Goblin pulled a _lever_ and a trapdoor opened beneath Hermione's feet, sending her sliding down a nearly vertical stone chute. The fall took rather a long time, and Hermione had time enough to congratulate herself for _not_ screaming, though it had bene very close. She didn't have lease to formulate other thoughts, though, as she came to a hard landing on a big metal chair — Goblin Silver, if she wasn't mistaken, though it had a strange reddish tint.

Her back, bottom and thighs rather ached from the impact, and she even felt an unpleasant sensation in her left shoulder, as though she'd pricked herself on a sharp rock somewhere along the way. But she had to admit that chair and that chute were remarkably well-aligned. That was Goblin craftsmanship for you.

She checked her surroundings. The room was dark, of course it was; Goblins saw in the dark; it was only for visitors' benefit that some of Gringotts was lit. But it wasn't quite pitch black either, and she could see, oh, many things. The walls, on her right and left, were adorned with expensive-looking ceremonial weapons. Swords. Axes. Pickaxes. There was an ancient-looking paramerion, set with rubies. And there was a Roman-style spatha with a diamond for a pommel. The interior decoration of this room had to be worth, oh, at least half a million Galleons just eyeballing it. Perhaps more, if you factored in the historical value these objects were certain to possess.

In front of her was a smooth stone table; it looked black — obsidian, perhaps — though in the darkness Hermione couldn't be too sure.

Opposite her, on the other side of the table, was another chair, this one unmistakably made of gold. Goblin Gold, too, she had no doubt. There was a Goblin in the chair, and another stood motionless to his left. Of this one she saw nothing, for he wore a black cloak in the style of Dark Wizards. But the Goblin on the golden throne — the Goblin on the golden throne was the Goblin King himself. He still wore his ordinary business robes, and had discarded his heavy golden crown, leaving his bald head bare and calling attentions to the heavy lines that wrinkled his forehead.

"Oh. Hello, your Majesty" said Hermione. "To what—"

The Goblin King raised a hand to silence her. She obeyed and watched him pull a large stone tablet from beneath the table. He lay it down on the table, between them, and then purposefully pressed his palm to it. Although the object didn't actually move, somehow Hermione still _felt_ the tablet suddenly come to life, as if vibrating with magic.

Slowly, delicately, the King traced an invisible symbol on the tablet with the clawed index finger of his left hand. Having done so, he removed both hands from the tablet and looked her in the eyes.

"Yes? Forgive us," said Ragnuk VII. "This artifact shall record our conversation. It is a…customary precaution during diplomatic meetings among Goblins. I am sure you understand, Miss Granger, your excellency."

"Naturally," she nodded, watching with some interest as her words and the King's etched themselves in the dark gray stone of the marble tablet.

She couldn't read it, of course; it was Goblin script, a form of writing that had developed independently from any human one from its inception. It was logographic, like one of the first human writing systems, the hieroglyphs invented by the ancient Egyptian wizard Thoth three millennia before the Christian era. Except where those were graceful and enigmatic, the forms of Gobbledegook's symbols were as coarse and uninviting as the sounds of the language spoken aloud. But as they were brutal, so they were clever, and there was something hypnotic to watching all these strange angular shapes appearing and slotting themselves together, like animate puzzle pieces.

It also interested the magic theorist in her, of course. The enchantments for automatic writing were something she had had to research extensively for the Babblebook, and this was an exemplary specimen of the form.

The Goblin King was still looking her intently in the eye; but she was quite certain he was trying no Legilimency. For a moment she felt — a mere brush. She could have imagined it. It was gone.

"Your excellency," he said, "would be most kind to state her name and quality, for the record. The archive of this interview would be of little use to the future if they do not know of whom those are the words."

She nodded. "I am Miss Hermione Jean Granger, Hogwarts Student and Lady of the Junior Marauders, born of Daniel Edward Granger and Sally Jane Granger. I am speaking on behalf of the Violin Nation, of which I am the sole representative."

The Goblin King looked at her for a moment, unblinking. He then turned away brusquely, and conferred in hushed tones with the Goblin in the black cloak, who answered in a most unpleasant, rasping whisper that could have been English, Gobbledegook, or Ancient Greek for how much Hermione could hear. Perhaps his robes were enchanted; Hermione had heard from someone (Albus? Douglas? she didn't remember) that discretion-granting hoods like that were available in Knockturn Alley.

After a minute of this confidential whispering, the two fell silent. The King waited a moment, gave a sharp nod, and returned to Hermione.

"We are Ragnuk the VII," said the King for the tablet's benefit, "Sovereign Elect of the Goblin Nation of the British Isles, Keeper of the Legacy of Ragnuk I, First Class Metalsmith, Maker of the Hammer of Ragnuk." (Ragnuk glanced at the Goblin in robes.) "Attending, but not participating, in this conference is a personal advisor who shall not be named."

"The… Hammer of Ragnuk?" Hermione asked curiously.

"Yes," nodded the King. "The creation which earned us our throne. As delicate a tool as it can be devastating a weapon. Perhaps we shall show it to you one day. But for today, we have graver matters to discuss."

"Yes?" asked Hermione, a bit distracted by the persistent pain in her left thigh. There was definitely a thorn there, or a sharp shard of stone, or _something_.

"We were informed that the Wizards had turned on you, your excellency," Ragnuk stated. "Is this true?"

"Well, it's a bit of a broad statement," Hermione replied, "to speak of _all_ Wizards, but the Ministry of Magic certainly has. _Minister_ Percy Weasley has done me no favors."

"Yet you placed him on the Wizards' throne yourself," prodded the Goblin. "So why—"

"How do you know _that_?"

"We have our ways," said the King, distant.

"Of course you do. Well, as to Percy's shift in behavior… who could I possibly know?" shrugged Hermione. "Perhaps it's Madam Umbridge. Perhaps it's something else."

" _Umbridge_ ," the Goblin King repeated, and he looked as though he was tasting something awful. "Now there is a woman whom, confidentially, we should very much like to see flattened between our Hammer and the ground. Between you and us."

The advisor in the black cloak bent down to whisper something unintelligible in the King's pointed ear.

"Yes, yes," the King said to the mystery Goblin, pulling away, "we know this would be politically disadvantageous at the present time. We are merely saying that were it possible we would very much _enjoy_ such an act."

"I can sympathize, your majesty," Hermione said with wry smile. "I hope you realize I have to deal with her as a Professor at Hogwarts — or I would have to, were I not… hm."

"We understand," said the King, "that you would be detained even now at Hogwarts, normally."

"That is correct."

"Yet you have broken out."

"That is also correct," she confirmed, grimacing as the stinging continued. "Obviously."

" _How_?" asked the King, with a glint of genuine curiosity in his large, dark eyes. "Perhaps — Dragonfire, once again? Hogwarts shares our weakness?"

"Nothing quite so destructive, your majesty," laughed Hermione. "Besides which, I don't know where I could have found a Dragon in the first place."

The King started.

"You mean you don't… know?"

"Apparently not," she answered with a shrug. "Please enlighten me: what _is_ it that I seem not to know?"

The Goblin King was _snickering_. Chuckling, even.

"Ah, forgive us, we thought you would have been told, or found out," he explained, "considering your standing, both with Dumbledore and with the Weasley clan… But we suppose, they must have kept it from you due to your position as a Champion… The Gringotts Dragons."

"Yes?" she asked, growing suspicious. "I thought we'd agreed you would have them moved to the great wyrm preserve in Romania. Was this not done?"

"It would have been, this summer," answered Ragnuk, still smiling, "if not for the wizard Dragon-Handlers there, who told us, you see, that we needn't bother with such a lengthy journey for nothing, as the Dragons — the Dragons were to be transported to Hogwarts."

"To _Hogwarts?!_ But _how—_ " she blurted out — but then shut her mouth. It made sense, really, that she'd missed them. It wasn't as though she'd gone out much. Neville, who was always sneaking about the Forbidden Forest, probably knew; she'd have to ask him. Still… "… _All_ of them?"

"Well, yes, all," tempered the monarch, "but pray do not get a false idea of how many individuals this represents. There are only so many British wizarding estates who are both in a capacity to afford Dragon protection, _and_ paranoid enough to require it. We could, of course, have arranged to obtain more at any time, should we have needed one; but the fact is that when you… opened our eyes to the tactical weakness they represented, we had, all in all,… six, Dragons."

"Six, you don't say…" hummed Hermione.

Six, like six Triwizard Champions. Hogwarts. …Of course! That was the First Task of the Triwizard — Dragons — something to do with Dragons… The oldest of magical stories: fighting a Dragon for some treasure or prize! She'd been a fool not to think of it. The First Task would see the six Champions each taking on a Dragon.

Well, she'd have to have ask Grindelwald about Dragons when she came back, then. Professor Hagrid, too. And perhaps Harry's friend Alastair knew a thing or two about Dragons? He had, after all, been part of the Acromantula Colony when they had domesticated Hagrid's rogue Dragon. Perhaps he'd observed useful techniques from the dragon-rider — what was his name, again? — Marchog.

"Well, now you know," said the King, "call it international courtesy. There remains the question. How _did_ you break out, Ambassador?"

Hermione hesitated. She _liked_ Ragnuk VII well enough, but that wasn't the same as _trusting_ him, and the fact that she didn't trust the Goblin King as far as she could throw him. He was definitely not someone she was prepared to tell about the Vanishing Cabinet, let alone the Room of Requirements.

So.

"Violin Magic," she finally answered with a knowing smile, which she had to stiffen when she felt yet another twang of pain from the damned thorn.

Fortunately, Ragnuk didn't appear to notice.

"Ah, we see," he said genially. "We apologize for asking; that was uncourteous of us." He darkened. "But now that you are out, what are your intentions? What do you intend to do?"

"Win the Triwizard Tournament," she answered automatically. "I have to compete, anyway. So I might as well."

"Understood," pressed the King, "but the Task is not for several weeks. What until then? Shall you travel abroad? Recruit?"

She quirked an eyebrow. What in Merlin's name was he talking about?

"Come now, your excellency, do not play coy," he insisted. "It is plain enough that you intend to launch a revolt against the Weasley Ministry. We would wager our crown that the ministerial throne shall be yours within the year."

Hermione stayed silent.

"Very well, we shall not ask for your strategies," said Ragnuk in a defeated voice, "but know that if it must come to a civil war, the Goblin Nation will be by your side. Perhaps we, ourselves, might even wield our Hammer against the witch Umbridge, after all."

"Not that I hope it will have to come to bloody combat, but… your Majesty, I could hug you," said Hermione, who had not had definite plans to launch a revolution until this particular moment, but relished the thought of hitting Umbridge with a hammer and was fast developing plans.

"Please don't," said the King. "Our Majesty _is_ married, you know. …At any rate, before anything else, we must know: what are your intentions towards us Goblins?"

There the King stared at her with such focused intent that it almost seemed creepy. Hermione didn't really see why. Even if she _did_ have ulterior motives that went against the Goblins' interest, did Ragnuk really think she would _tell_ him that? Oh well.

"Oh, you know," she said as mildly as she could. "The basics. Give you full equal rights, including wand use, stamp our rampant prejudice against you, etcetera."

What she didn't mention was that she would also reform Goblin society rather heavily. For one thing, the British Goblins weren't much for gender equality — there had never been a female Goblin working at Gringotts. They were also little too quick to consider axe murder as a solution to their problems. But all that was mere details.

"Marvelous," said the King appreciatively. "Thank you. We shall leave you to your business above. Good day, Ambassador."

Hermione got up and prepared to leave by the door that had suddenly opened on the left wall of the diplomacy chamber. Just as she was about to step away, however, she thought better of it and turned around to look at her seat more closely. Indeed, there was a little needle sticking out of the metal.

"Your Majesty?" she called. "There's a… shard… on my chair. You may want to—"

"Clever one! Clever one," laughed the Goblin ruler without letting her finish. "This is intentional. We wondered if you would notice its importance — this is no ordinary Chair, but the special Chair of Truth. We hope you will not begrudge us its use…"

"Chair of Truth?" Hermione repeated dubiously.

"A special little invention of our people, to ensure diplomats' honesty," the King explained, rather unsettlingly gleeful. "It is enchanted to draw blood from its occupant for every lie they tell. A pint per untruth, to be exact."

Hermione gulped, and thanked Merlin for her Acromantula blood's regenerative abilities. She tried to think back to how many little lies she had told the Goblin King… not that many, in the end; she would probably have survived either way, and might even have been able to disguise her discomfort if she'd caught on to its significance; but it would have been close. She was nothing but friendly and polite to the King as he escorted her back to the surface. But she walked rather more briskly than she usually would.


	76. The First Task

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _Phew! Why was this so hard to write, again? Because I feel like this is a pretty good effort right here. Over four thousand words, for one thing. Tonks, for another. Advancement of the Percy plot. And also: DRAGONS! WEEEEE! …So here's to you all enjoying it as much as I feel like you ought, and to me not taking quite so long to writ Chapter 73. In the meantime, thanks to all who support the story, and please review!_

 **Chapter LXXII: _The First Task_**

The days passed, and it became clear that Umbridge had no intention of letting the two prisoners out of the 'Secret Prison' for the night as they had initially been led to believe. The Cauldron Professor seemed much happier to have them out of sight and out of mind until the Tasks began.

Of course, this didn't bother Hermione and Grindelwald as much as she probably thought it did. Considering the Room gave them full leisure to materialize the fluffiest bedding imaginable, Grindelwald much preferred sleeping there to spending the night in the birdcage. And as for meals, they simply made themselves regulars of the Leaky Cauldron's, having successfully persuaded Narcissa Malfoy to return the Vanishing Cabinet to Borgin and Burke's for good. Patrolling Cauldron Inspectors caught sight of the pair on the third day, but Hermione placated them with the explanation she had prepared just for this occasion, and, realizing they had no legal hold on the two so long as they were only here for meals, the law-enforcers reluctantly left them alone after that.

There were a few things wrong with this set-up, of course. For one, Hermione couldn't ask Hagrid and Alastair about Dragons as she'd wanted to do, though the vast knowledge of Grindelwald alone, combined with the full reaches of the Room when it came to books, proved quite sufficient to her needs. She spent most of her days learning and practicing with her very own personal tutor.

For another, she had no chance to meet up with her friends. (Well, most of her friends, in theory, for she had been able to use the Room to summon Minerva's frame; but once again it was empty. Where _had_ she gone off to?) After a week or so of Umbridge showing no sign of changing her mind, Hermione, for all that she was staying in the same building as Harry, Ron & company, was forced to _write_ to them, and send the letters _to_ Hogwarts from the _Leaky Cauldron_. There she poured her heart out to all the gang, and to her parents while she was at it. She also recommended they start revisions on their O.W.L.s as soon as possible; she knew this wouldn't be the most welcome part of her letters, but in her opinion, they should deem themselves lucky. A nagging post-scriptum at the end of a letter was nothing compared to the constant vocal reminders she would have been giving them if they'd been sharing a dormitory.

On Saturday, Hermione and Grindelwald collected their mail at the _Leaky Cauldron_ , alongside Hermione's copy of the _Other Paper_. Of all the replies, it was Ron's which stuck out to her; for it informed her that the First Task was to take place a week from then, in the early afternoon. Hermione had the inescapable feeling that this was all the notification she was going to get — Umbridge would have seen to that. She thanked Ron profusely in a new letter, and, with renewed fervor, Hermione studied. The seven days went by in a frenzied haze of scales and fire. Finally, the day came.

In preparation, the two prisoners returned to the 'cell' part of the Room in the morning and closed the passage to the main hall behind them. They then killed time before the Task by playing Wizarding Tit-for-Tat, where once you'd completed a row, it came to life, crawling like a little pencil caterpillar, and tried to bite your opponent. They had great fun.

As expected, the commanding, but impeccably polite knock of Kingsley Shacklebot roused them at 1 p.m. sharp, followed by the heavy metal door opening to reveal him and… huh? Had his colleague — "Auror Tonks", was her name — been relieved of her duties and replaced? The woman who stood before the two prisoners had dark skin, blue eyes, and her hair was long and reddish-brown. Nothing like the pink-, short-haired witch who had first brought them here, making puns all the way. Yet there was something sneakily familiar in the general proportions, in the shape of the nose, in the gleam of the eyes, in the smirk itself.

Tonks laughed.

"Yep, it's still me," she chuckled. "Don't worry, I get that look a _lot_. I'm a Metamorphmagus, see?"

The witch's hair suddenly curled itself and became black. Meanwhile, Tonks's nose had lengthened until it looked almost like a Goblin's, and she had made her hands greenish and webbed, like a Merperson's.

"Wow", said Hermione, who had a million question and a powerful feeling most of them would be extremely rude of her to ask. "Er,… er…"

"I get _that_ look a lot too," the Auror joked, rescuing her from the awkward situation. "Even the old Shacklebot 3000 here —" she playfully nudged her partner — "wouldn't let be breathe for five minutes when we first assigned together. So: Metamorphmagussery. Yes, it's an innate gift for self-Transfiguration, so no, you can't just learn it if you want to. No, I can't turn into just _anything_ , though I'm pretty sure that with enough practice I could manage a lot more range than just humanoids. (Can't be arsed though. Turning into anyone I like is ace enough.) Yes, I can turn into men as well as women, and into children as well as adults. Yes, it's a big help with my job and all that. Yes, I do have a 'natural' appearance 'at rest', though I don't use it very much. Yes, I do try out a new hair color every week, wouldn't you if you were me? And no, I don't want to sleep with you just because you think my talent might be useful there."

" _Tonks!_ " chided Kingsley. "She's… what, sixteen?"

"Almost seventeen," Hermione confirmed. Goodness, that was true, wasn't it? Her birthday was next week. "But you know, I'm not _prudish_ about these things just because I'm a minor. Snakes aren't; why should _I_ be? Still, don't worry, Auror Tonks, I'm in no way trying to seduce you."

"Smashing," the Metamorphmagus said with a nod. "So. Does that answer all your questions?"

"I have one more, actually."

"Shoot."

"Are you part-Boggart?"

* * *

It turned out that if the gift of Metamorphmagussery was the result of interbreeding with Boggarts generations past, Tonks's family had quite forgotten it. If they'd ever known at all; that was the thing with falling in love with shapeshifters.

Time was growing short, so they stepped out into the corridor, Grindelwald climbed into Nurmengard II, and they began making their way out of the Castle.

It only took one look out the first window she saw for Hermione and Grindelwald to realize how much they had missed in those two weeks holed up inside the Room of Wonders — marvelous though it was. All around them, the Wizarding World had been busy making preparations for the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament, which were now reaching their peak at this eleventh hour.

As far as the eye could see, the sky was riddled with approaching flying figures — most were wizards and witches on broomsticks and carpets, even one riding a Pegasus (Hermione caught a flash of gold and lavender that suggested Gilderoy Lockhart) but there were also scores of owls come to cheer on Hedwig, the strange, and Harpy-like silhouettes of Veelas in their bird forms, and carriages pulled by great winged beasts (Barry Winkle's carriage was pulled by what was unmistakably a the largest Queenstinger Bee in recorded history), and many other strange shapes she simply couldn't identify at this distance. All that, and more on the ground below, converged towards the flying Castle Hogwarts.

No, not _towards_ the Castle — as they got nearer, the flying figures dove slightly _below_ the hovering mass of stone and turrets. Hermione opened the window and tried to bend down to see where they were going, but it was simply impossible at this angle. She did, however, have a very good vantage point on the patch of ground below Hogwarts; barren and rocky when she had first raised the school into the air to foil Scardemort's plans, it was now a very different picture indeed. A large arena had been raised — well, she guessed it was an arena from the context; it look more like a sort of great enclosure, with wrought iron fencing twenty feet high all around it. The inside seemed to be a reproduction of the mountains of Romania so praised by Dragons, a mess of jagged rock formations with sparse, dark vegetation and a thousand dark corners that could have been the entrances of a web of caves. Strangely, there were no benches around it, but that only made the spectacle more intriguing.

And there were the Dragons themselves. Six in all, as she had been promised by Ragnuk VII. She lingered at the window for a while, trying to spot them all. There was a pale, frightfully thin, immense beast, which had to be a Ukrainian Ironbelly for its sheer size, though its eyes shone more pink that red; the easiest Dragon to see, both for its colors and for its bulk. At the other end of the enclosure, in one of its grassier areas, slept an old, plump Common Welsh Green, who roused only to occasionally dart eyes at the ghoulish Ironbelly. Not paying attentions to either were a Portuguese Long-Snout and Swedish Short-Snout, who were crushing some of the smaller boulders beneath their weight as they engaged in playful, friendly wrestling (you could tell it was friendly because neither was breathing fire). Perhaps the hardest Dragon to spot, which took Hermione a solid two minutes, was the dark brown, bulky Romanian Longhorn, as it had folded its great wings above itself to look rather like a hill — but the rings of smoke from its snoring eventually betrayed it. Finally, there was one wyrm which, clearly bursting with energy, had already taken flight; some invisible leash kept it from attacking the Castle or the arriving guests, but it surely didn't fail for lack of trying. A Peruvian Vipertooth.

"Hello? Purple Bushflower ma'am?"

Hermione turned round to see that Shacklebot, Tonks and Grindelwald (back in his cage) had already reached the other end of the corridor while she was sightseeing, and were obviously waiting for her.

"Hm? Sorry, Auror Tonks, I merely—"

"Yeah, yeah, sure, it's pretty," granted Tonks, "but get a shift on. We're going to miss your official carriage."

"…Carriage?" Hermione repeated dumbly. "What carriage?"

"…the carriage?" Tonks insisted. "Flying carriage? The kind with Thestrals at one end of it? The kind you use to get in and out of Hogwarts now that you've turned it into a blinking hot-air balloon? That kind of carriage?…"

"Oh, I see," laughed Hermione as she realized what the Auror was talking about. "Well, I didn't get here by carriage this September. I didn't know. …Come to think of it, it's very nice you, but I shan't be requiring a carriage."

"Oh, won't you now?" asked Shacklebot like a teacher trying to a patient. "Then how pray tell do you expect to get from _up here_ to _down there_?"

"Oh, that part is exceedingly simple," said Hermione. "I'll do it this way."

And with a smile, she opened the window more fully, climbed on the ledge, thought of Nettle and Ron and Harry and her parents and everyone she cared about — and jumped.

She let herself fall about ten feet, then soared back up like a helicopter, enjoying the sensation. Harry could keep all the fancy broomsticks Jester White kept sending him whenever he felt like it, _this_ was all the flying she cared to do. She zoomed further away from Hogwarts, giving one last amused look at the stunned faces of Tonks and Shacklebot at the window, then steered herself down in a spiral pattern. A flight of tawny owls swerved to make way for her, and she squeaked an apology before her voice was cut off by what she could now see, hovering halfway between Hogwarts and the ground. _There_ were the benches she had found missing.

In an inversion of the stands of a Quidditch pitch, they had been built on the _bottom_ of the flying Hogwarts, hanging safely _over_ the rocky arena, offering a full view of events to the spectators. How it all hung together, Hermione couldn't even begin to imagine; perhaps it was lots of Sticking Charms, perhaps it was something more. Still it was stunning. It made Hogwarts look a little like some giant jellyfish, with tendrils of benches and guests hanging loosely beneath its 'head', swaying in the breeze.

Except, of course, it wasn't the breeze that was swaying the hanging rows; it was the frantic movement of fifteen thousand spectators vying for the best seats, of dozens of peddlers of Omnioculars and assorted merchandise looking for clients, and of the three Judges of the Triwizard vainly trying to make their way to their own designated box, which had been very artistically, but also very unpractically, placed in the exact middle of one of the three hanging walls of bench-rows. (There were three, not four, of course; the light had to get in _somehow_.) Already seated there were Professor Umbridge and Minister Weasley himself, as well as what looked like a heavily injured mummy, but was more probably Barty Crouch Sr., Head of the Department of Magical Games & Sports, released at last (but in what state!) from Saint Mungo's. Not in the official box itself, but seated somewhat conspicuously to its right, was the proud, mustached figure of the Senior Undersecretary, Horace Slughorn.

There was also a platform floating roughly in the middle of the area closed off by the walls of benches. Technically not a magic carpet — something the Ministry would never have allowed — as it was made of wood, but that was certainly the impression it gave off. Viktor Krum and Gabrielle Delacour were already standing there, and Helen Monroe and Wesley Weasley arrived soon after in one of the Thestral-pulled carriages, followed by Hedwig the Owl, who for lack of a better option perched herself on Viktor's head (Viktor, straight as a rod and still as a statue, gave no indication that he had noticed). Hermione gathered this was where the contestants were supposed to go, and made her way there. She came to a soft landing slightly to the left of Wesley, who, of course, stood in the middle and exuded an overwhelming sense that no other place could possibly do him justice.

There was a great clamor as the spectators realized all three of the Judges of the Triwizard, and all six of the Champions, were in attendance.

Albus Dumbledore, from the Judges' panel, cast an area-wide Silencing Charm — he did like that spell, didn't he? Hermione had once supposed it was one of the spells that it was vital you get right, if you embraced the career of a schoolteacher… but he used it rather more often than Flitwick or McGonagall. The Charm worked like, well, like a charm: the crowd suddenly went quiet, and when Dumbledore then lifted the enchantment, they remained mostly silent.

With a Sonorus-amplified voice, Dumbledore then said a few words.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and any other… entities… in attendance…" he began.

Hermione was a little confused at that, but caught Dumbledore's line of sight; sitting in one of the lower rows, given _ample_ room to breathe on his right and left by the other spectators, was a lone Dementor. No, not just _a_ Dementor; even at this distance, Hermione felt pretty confident that this was none other than Peter himself, the friendlier-than-average Dementor who had deigned to give her the secret of Unsupported Flight.

 _How nice of him to drop by!_ , was Hermione's, and precisely no one else's, first thought about this development. On _second_ thought, though, it was rather intriguing. Hermione was pretty sure the Azkaba Dementors' agreement with the Ministry left no lease for them to wander to the mainland without special permissions, since it required that all of them guard Azkaban at all times. Oh well. If Peter had picked up a trick or two from her during her unwilling stay on Azkaban Island, and found a loophole in that contract — all the better for him, and it wasn't really any of her business.

She turned her attention back to Dumbledore, who had continued his speech whilst her mind wandered.

"…but before I declare the Triwizard Tournament officially open, in my capacity both as its reinstigator, as one of its Judges, and as Supreme Mugwum of the International Confederation of Wizard, there is another duty of mine which calls, one which trumps all these in importance so long as I remain on Hogwarts grounds. That of Headmaster."

There were some curious murmurs in the audience, and one or two shouts of ' _Get on with it, we want some action already_ ', quickly silenced by concerned neighbors.

"As many of you must know by now, present circumstances make it intenable for Professor Gellert Grindelwald to continue teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts here at Hogwarts. If I do say so myself, it was rather harrying to find a suitable replacement at such short notice, yet I have managed it, in the person of Mr Robertus Tallis. I ask you all give him a warm welcome."

A clever-looking man with a pointed brown beard, smoking a pipe and carrying a great big spellbook under his arm, sat up from slightly to the left of the official box, gave a quick bow, and sat himself once again. Though his name meant nothing to Hermione, the newly-minted Professor Tallis seemed nice enough to her; certainly he didn't look evil, and he seemed too clever to be incompetent. He was also clearly too healthy to be a werewolf, or a vampire. And if he had caused any World Wars, he didn't show it. In short, Tallis might have been a dream come true of a Defence Professor.

Too bad Hermione wouldn't get to attend any of his lessons.

(Curse Percy, curse Umbridge, and curse the whole damned Statute.)

"Thank you," said Dumbledore, quieting the approximately three persons who had been clapping for Tallis with more than cursory enthusiasm. "And now, for the main event. I declare the Triwizard Tournament open!"

"I declare," echoed Judge Olympe Maxime.

"I declare," said Judge Gellert Grindelwald.

" _Hrmshrbghhre_ ", moaned the mummy of Judge Bartemius Crouch.

This miserable display of Crouch's continued disability silenced Dumbledore for a moment, and that was all the opportunity Professor Umbridge needed to take over. It was not entirely clear to Hermione why the irritating woman was even _in_ the official box, but she was clearly going to make the best of it.

"My fellow witches and wizards, citizens of Wizarding Britain," she began, and prattled and prattled in that condescending way of hers for a while, ignoring the non-British or non-wizarding elements of her audience as steadily as she sang the praises of Percy's inept government and its cauldron-oriented reforms. The winding speech came to the most wretched end imaginable as Umbridge then nudged Percy with her elbow and invited him to say a few words himself.

Percy, who for his part looked tired, and quite lost, really, almost haggard, adjusted his tie nervously, then his glasses, then coughed.

"I, erm." he mumbled in an uncertain, tiny voice, though the Sonorus Charm was still in place for everyone to hear. "Well. It's quite an honor to… have been chosen as Minister for Magic, yes… I thank you all, and shall strive to… yes… the Cauldron Bottoms, you see… our current legislation simply… it simply won't do. I have to introduce reforms, more reforms. Yes. That's right. Though you, the people, have only given me this power, this Ministerial Chair… because of the… crisis… I shall… yes."

Scanning the crowd for large densities of redheads, Hermione easily found the rest of the Weasley clan, Ron and Molly and all, and they all looked quite miserable at their kin's bumbling. The truth was that _Fudge_ had given better speeches than this. _Cornelius Fudge_. Not only had Percy stammered and mumbled his way through a speech barely longer than a holiday greeting, but he had somehow managed to completely overlok the subject of the Triwizard Tournament. It was ridiculous. It was —

— concerning.

Percy could be obtuse. Yes. But to this extent? And he was meant to be the ever-formal overachiever. This wasn't _like_ him.

Hermione sighed inwardly. More problems. More mysteries to investigate. She had a Tournament to win, damn it all! Why couldn't Fudge just have gotten a hold of his nerves, and _not_ decided to up and turn into a snail at such an inopportune time? Her thoughts wandered to a half-baked dream of infiltrating the Ministry, finding the damned snail, and having it turn back into the more-or-less-halfway-decent Minister it was _supposed_ to be. Whether it wanted to or not.

Seemingly realizing that she was making an embarrassment of her own puppet, Umbridge hurried to sit Percy back down and made no further attempts to usurp Dumbledore's place as master of ceremony. The old sorcerer cleared his throat and announced:

"The First Task will now begin. And that means the secret shall at last be revealed of what, precisely, the Task is."

"Oh, bollocks, Mumblebeard, we _know_ it's Dragons," shouted someone in the audience. "Get to it already."

"Keen observation, Mr Bulstrode," answered Dumbledore without missing a beat, looking directly at the coarse, ill-dressed shape of Barnaby Bulstrode, who felt rather vulnerable all of a sudden, with his identity revealed. "Dragons indeed. But do you know what is to be _done_ with the Dragons, Mr Bulstrode?"

The wizard shook his head miserably.

"Are the Champions to duel them? Tame them? Ride them? Eat them, perhaps?"

Bulstrode visibly _shrank_ under Dumbledore's stern, questioning gaze until it was quite certain he would not trouble the festivities further. At that point the Judge of the Triwizard stopped looking at him completely and returned to addressing the wider audience.

"None of these," he answered to his own question. "No, each of these Dragons, as is the nature of their kind, hoards a treasure in their unseen lair. It has been given to them, and they will guard it fiercely. Won't they, Mr Weasley?"

Hermione was a little confused for a moment that Dumbledore should address Percy, and on such a matter; then she realized he was instead talking to a short, stocky wizard with short red hair, who sat on a broomstick in one of the corners of the arena. He gave a pronounced nod. Hermione's eyes widened as she remembered Ron had told her of a brother of his who was a professional Dragon-handler; a stout, smiling fellow by the name of Charlie. Well, well, what a small world.

It was literally true in this case, of course. The Wizarding World _was_ quite small when you got right down to it. There weren't that many English-speaking Dragon-handlers on the face of the Earth when push came to shove.

"Of course, it is not the whole treasure which you are expected to bring back from the depths, but a specific item from it," Dumbledore explained. "If your minds are as sharp as the brave hearts which have brought you to this moment, and considering the circumstances, you should have no difficulty finding what it is; though fear not; a passing grade at least will be awarded if you otherwise complete the Task satisfactorily, yet fail to bring back the correct artifact."

These news seemed to reassure Wesley and Hedwig; she couldn't imagine either were very versed in old wizarding lore. She didn't have too great expectations of Viktor Krum and Gabrielle Delacour's scholarship, either, though she knew better than to underestimate people based on their appearance; besides which, both stayed impassive, as did Helen Monroe, who Hermione had no doubt was surest to be strong competition.

Still, she had a pretty good feeling about all of this.

"The Champions may take with them any magical items they wish," Dumbledore finished exposing the rules, "though be warned that it is not by relying on the enchantments of others that you shall earn the Judges' favors. As concerns the order of passage, it was felt appropriate that the Champions face their Dragons in the order they were chosen by the Goblet. Therefore, our first challenger of the First Task of the Triwizard shall be Viktor Krum, of the Durmstrang Institute! Mr Krum, you may begin… now."

"…Vait," said Viktor, standing there dumbly. "Ow am I to get town from here?"

"Oh, did I not mention?" said Dumbledore. He swished and flicked his wand in the direction of the platform. An Invisibility Cloak (not _the_ Invisibility Cloak, but a pretty good imitation) flew off the ground, revealing, right there, at the very feet of the Champions, six Nimbus 2000 in prime condition. "There. You're all set. Now begin! I believe we've kept our audience waiting long enough…"


	77. Luna Lovegood and the Horrific Hiatus

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _What a fellow mustn't do to get around those "no chapters that are just Author's Notes" rules… but hey, this was fun, and at least you get_ _some_ _new writing._

 **Chapter LXXII-B:** _ **Luna Lovegood & the Horrific Hiatus**_

"I've believe we've kept the audience waiting long enough," said Dumbledore. He repeated it, in exactly the same tone, then flickered like a broken hologram and then froze.

The entire arena had frozen with him, and the Dragons too.

There was one girl who didn't freeze, however, and that was Luna Lovegood. Maybe it was because she was wearing her favorite Anti-Timey-Wimey Knicknack necklace. Or maybe it was because she was the main character in this little fantasy, a fantasy she was telling herself to see if she could come up with something even more amazing that what was going on around her. Or maybe it was just fate.

Luna looked around the frozen people with a curious smile, and finally saw someone moving. It was a strange fellow in a top hat, with a skull-like face. He was, strangely enough, in black-and-white. He did not have a wand in hand; instead, he held a laptop that was clearly too advanced for the mid-1990's. Luna wondered if he was a mad scientist — but there was that skull face — maybe a ghost? Maybe both.

"Hello, Luna," said the Man in the Top Hat, warily. "I'm… not entirely sure how long this metafictional bubble will hold, so let's get this out of the way… Congratulations on not freezing, by the way. It shows you're very genre-aware. It's a quality you should cultivate."

"Congratulations to you, Mr Top Hat Man," answered Luna Lovegood. "I don't think I've ever had a whimsical hallucination who felt as real as you do."

"Thank you," replied the Man in the Top Hat with a small bow. "You can call me Mr Talon, if you like."

"Ooh! Talons, like a veela?" she asked.

"No, actually, it's French for heel."

"You don't seem like a heel."

"No, no," the Man in the Top Hat waved her off. "With the first name 'Achille' — it's a pun on Achilles Heel, don't you see? Oh, never mind."

No longer looking at Luna, the Man in the Top Hat had turned to face the screen of his laptop, and in that moment it seemed to Luna as though he was not ouside the laptop at all, but on the other side, speaking from behind the screen to people in another world. (Luna could be very creative like that in her daydreams.)

"Alright," said the Man in the Top Hat in an apologetic voice, "I know you readers have been expecting more Dragon adventures for… quite a while, and I'm sorry. However, when I'm not a metafictional avatar running around the Triwizard Tournament, I do have a real life, too… and the point is, I'm busy and tired and sick and all sorts of things, at once, and therefore, rather than keep you all waiting for nothing, I am officially going on a hiatus. It shouldn't last more than two months at most, and it will most probably be shorter, but—don't wait up."

He waited a moment for those words to sink in. Not in Luna, who had no earthly idea what he was raving about, but rather to his imaginary audience.

"To this," he added, "I'll add my customary thanks to all the people who review my creation, or otherwise support it… I would not have continued writing this far with you wonderful, wonderful people. And for the duration of this hiatus… I invite you to send me requests of what you would like to see in this story in the future. I can't make any promises, but I just might use some of the ideas you'll send!"

As if he'd suddenly been struck by yet another idea, he further elaborated:

"I should hasten to point out that while these requests can be anything, well, as I believe I've already mentioned, if it's pairings, I'm not going to listen to you. Hermione has better things to do than silly schoolgirl romances, and this will keep being the case until the Epilogue at least. …But if anyone cares, it _is_ canonical that Ron has a crush on her anyway."

Finally, he gave a bow as Luna clapped, and then began to vanish as life returned to the surroundings, with none but Luna the wiser.

"Oh, and, lest I forget, to all those who expected a real, serious chapter — not that this isn't canonical, mind you… well… April Fools! MWAHAHAHA! The hiatus _is_ still happening mind you."

The Man in the Top Hat fully ceased to exist, and Krum grabbed his broom.

Luna settled back in her seat and waited.


	78. Dragonfighting

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _We're back!… And two months' break was just about right for me to fend off writer's block. As always, be sure to tell me your thoughts on this new chapter thanks to that wonderful feature of ffnet they call Reviews!_ _Oh, and three more things:_

 _1) Yes, Chapter 72B is canon, though perhaps only as one of Luna's delusions — you decide._

 _2) Don't know if anyone noticed, but halfway through the hiatus, I eased myself back into Parselwriting by doing a heavy rewrite on Chapter 1, complete with a much-expanded Author's Note which contains titles and summaries for each of this story's "Years", including the ones that aren't finished yet! So unless you fear even the foggiest of spoilers, be sure to check that one._

 _3) Throughout this story, as you may have noticed, I spell the French school's name Beauxbâtons. In the canon books, it is instead rendered as Beauxbatons, but as a native French speaker, this is obnoxious to me, as the word for "stick" is "bâton", not "baton". (Beauxbâtons' name means "Pretty Sticks", if you didn't know. I think Rowling was trying to name it "Pretty Wands" and got confused, but that's just my theory, cough cough.)_

 _Right! On with the show!_

 **Chapter LXXIII: _Dragonfighting_**

It had seemed like months to our hero when the Champion of the Durmstrang Institute finally made his move. Viktor grabbed one of the brooms and jumped off the platform; giving everyone a fright, he let himself fall like a stone; a frightening maneuver, but it did mean he was a mere blur, too fast to catch the attention of the Vipertooth. He slowed down with stunning precision just before he hit the dented background.

"And now we see Viktor Krum kicking off with his signature move — a perfectly-executed Wronski feint!" commented Ron, the Triwizard Architect, and, it seemed, its designated commentator. "He's definitely showing the fans what they want to see!"

This much was obvious, considering the loud cheers rumbling across the stands.

"But this is no Quidditch game," Ron continued. "Will the Champion of Durmstrang do as well with his wand has he has with a broomstick? Let's see what Dragon he chooses… uh? Wait a moment, folks, it doesn't look like Krum is planning on dismounting… he's flying back up towards us… it almost looks like — _huh_?!"

Krum, back in their air, was flying literal circles around the Peruvian Vipertooth.

"Blimey! He _is_!" shouted Ron. "He's _taunting_ it! Well… that's _one_ way to do it — get the Dragon out of commission first, and _then_ go for the loot. Terribly dangerous, though. Yeah, he's bringing more Quidditch into this, I'm sure now… that's the same trick used in 1965 by the Wimbourne Wasps opposite the Chudley Cannons — daze the other Seeker and only then start looking for the Snitch."

Hermione had very little idea what her friend was talking about, having never had too much interest in Quidditch or any other kind of broomstick-riding. But that didn't stop her from feeling very proud of him. For one thing, he looked quite dashing from the stand, observing the goings-on below with a golden magical eyepiece. For another, his analysis of Krum's strategy, what she could understand of it, seemed quite right… He wasn't the most unbiased of commentators, of course, but so what? He wasn't _refereeing_ , just offering hopefully-insightful narration. All in all, she was almost sure that Albus would award Gryffindor a hefty sum of points for this, and they would be quite deserved.

Which didn't mean that this plan, if indeed it was Krum's, was that well-thought-out: the large flying monster was not some easily exhausted witch. It was simply too bulky to match the whirlwind that was Krum on his broom, but it kept snapping and clawing at him, showing no sign of tiring.

Fortunately for her opinion of Viktor Krum's intelligence, however, it soon became clear that it _wasn't_ what the Bulgarian had planned at all. When he'd had enough of flying in a loop, he swerved abruptly, like a hawk, and made a beeline for the ground. Once again, he avoided the rocks by an inch, as did the increasingly frustrated beast chasing him. And he did it again. And again.

"Okay, _I_ helped design this thing," Ron commented, "and _I_ 'm not sure what's going on. But Krum is certainly lucky we ensured nobody would get hurt in the Tournament, because… ooh, he's playing a dangerous game."

Hermione wasn't entirely sure what sort of protections Ron and Dumbledore could have devised that would prevent one from cracking one's skull in a failed Wronski feint, but she was grateful for them, not only for herself but also out of sympathy for Krum. Again and again and again the young wizard swooped past various barren areas of the enclosure, until—

"Wait! Wait! I get it!" cried a victorious Ron. "Oh, this is brilliant! He's not just diving at random, he's hitting piece of land after piece of land… to get the Vipertooth to show him where its nest is! There, see? This time the Dragon didn't fly back up after him… it's _guarding_ something _here_! Ah, there, Krum's noticed… He's coming down from behind… _Ah!_ "

The yelp of surprise that escaped Ron's lips then had been shared by most of the audience. Noticing Krum's approach, the Dragon had spat a stream of greenish fire at him. He dodged, of course, and came again just as strongly. Dodging a second short of lames, he somehow managed to land on the back of the Dragon, who tried to shake him off to no avail.

"Bloody _hell_ this is amazing!" trumpeted Ron. "Krum has used a wandless Sticking Charm to attach himself to the Vipertooth — and _it_ can't fire or claw at its back any more than humans can scratch an itch in _that_ spot, see what I mean? Hah!"

Carefully, unsticking his right hand from the wyrm's neck, but not any other limb, Krum took his wand out from his pocket and, pointing it towards a spot a few paces ahead of the Dragon's furious head, he placed a Levitation Charm on a huge, jagged boulder.

"Is he trying to—?! Hahahah!" laughed Ron at the spectacle, before his magically-amplified oral spotlight was stolen by his own brother Charlie.

"We wish to remind the Champion," said th Dragon-Handler urgently, "that no serious harm is to come to the Dragon."

"I KNOW! NOT VORRY! I PICK ROCK JUST RIGHT, YES?" shouted Krum as he levitated the boulder until it was just above the monster's horned head — then dropped it.

It hit the Dragon's magically-reinforced cranium with a comical 'BONK' sound and then rolled off while the Dragon lost consciousness with a whimper. Unsticking himself from the dazed beast, Krum uneasily crawled up its neck and then found one of its eyes. He pulled open the eyelid and muttered an incantation.

"Okay then!" explained Ron, "It looks like Krum is firing a few Stunners at the Dragon through its weak spot, the eyeball… it already looks pretty stunned to me, but it's just to be safe, I guess. Wouldn't want it waking up at an inopportune time. Makes sense enough. …There, he's done! Right, that's one Dragon out of commission. Pretty impressive, I think we'll all agree! But _now_ what?"

Now, the athlete jumped off his defeated opponent and gathered himself before casting one fo the strongest Banishing Charms Hermione had ever seen. It succeeded in pushing the sleeping Dragon to the side, revealing the entrance of a cave. It was too dark and too far away to see the inside of it, but it looked quite deep to Hermione. Had they really excavated into the bedrock below Hogwarts to prepare the Tournament, she wondered? Or were those caves older?

Boldly, he hopped in. It was a tense few minutes until he came back out, holding forth, in his hands, and immense golden axe.

"I CLAIM VICTORY!" he said, "AND THE PAWVERFOOL VEAPON THAT PROVES THE STRENGTH OF A CHAMPION!"

"Very well," said Judge Maxime. She flicked her wand in his direction and up he flew, _sans_ broomstick, seemingly carried by his left ankle, but still clinging to the battle axe.

He landed in the Judges' Lodge under thunderous applause, though the Judges themselves didn't appear entirely content with him.

"Is it just me," asked Helen, "or is the axe probably not what we're supposed to pick up?"

" _Obviously_ it isn't," Hermione agreed. "And is it just _me_ , or were you just… helpful?"

"What? I'm a _Hufflepuff_ , and proud of it," answered the Dark Lady of said House. "I'm only doing what I'm doing to help, you know. It's not my fault you don't see the Greater Good. Besides, this is hardly the first time I'm of assistance to you. Have you forgotten? I did save your life last Christmas."

"So you did… thanks again for that," Hermione said, a little awkwardly. "That doesn't… change matters, though. I still think you have to be stopped. You've… killed people."

"And you _haven't_?"

"You're _trying to start a world war_!"

"I'm trying to do no such thing," Monroe corrected. "I'm trying to free Lord Grindelwald. The tactics which, once I _have_ freed him, he may or may not implement to achieve his glorious designs, are not my responsibility, nor are they my concern."

"Hoot," said Hedwig, welcomely releasing the tension. (This particular 'hoot', if Hermione wasn't mistaken, meant something like 'oh dear'.)

Meanwhile, the Judges had finished their hushed talks, and Judge Grindelwald announced:

"Very well! Let the Champion for the Beauxbâtons Academy of Magic and Enchantments step forward and take her broom."

"I don't need a broom," said the ridiculously little girl as she readied herself.

She took a deep breath, and next anyone knew, she had turned herself into some sort of hideous bird-girl, all charm gone, replaced by the features of a harpy. She still bore the French girl's innocent smile, however, and she winked to her fellow Champions:

"Veela genes are ze best."

Oh, so _that_ was it.

Hermione had read of Veelas, of course; she knew the list of officially-recognized sapient species in the Wizarding World by heart. She had never thought it too urgent to acquaint herself with them, however, as while they had been ignominiously cast out of their ancestral Scandinavian homes, the new home they had found in France had proved surprisingly accepting of them. It helped that Veelas were not only human-like, but extremely attractive at that; really, their unearthly beauty was the only difference between them and wizardkind, to look at them.

Of course, Veelas were not allowed wands any more than any other Being, and that would have to be corrected someday. But between Veelas, integrated in the Wizarding World and routinely marrying wizards and witches, and who knew wandless magicks galore besides, and Serpents or Elves whom most wizards did not eve think of as people, it had been obvious where her priorities must lie.

So she had failed to learn that half- or even quarter-Veelas such as the Beauxbâtons Champion could still transform into bird ladies at will. Granted, Gabrielle's bird form was a little more humanoid than the pictures she had seen of regular Veelas' harpy forms; the legs were not quite talons, the plumage was not as lush as all that and revealed patches of bare skin here and there, and all in all the proportions were just a little queer. She could still fly, though, which was the essential bit.

So Gabrielle flew down, as elegantly as a dove, and landed on a rocky formation that was none other than the Romanian Longhorn. It seemed to take a moment for the child to realize where she was standing, though her sudden jolt of surprise seemed almost practiced in its theatricality. She then flew off the bovine-like Dragon's back like a frightened pigeon, and then whirled back to face its enormous head as she gently touched the ground, morphing back to human form even as she did so.

There, she took another small moment to catch her breath, and then broke out into a skillful dance. It was not the art of adult Veelas, sultry and voluptuous and as slippery as springtime; indeed, it would have been strange and faintly wrong for a girl her age to perform such a dance. But it was definitely the same magic that animated Gabrielle's hypnotic motions. Awoken, the Longhorn stayed still, transfixed by the strange spectacle unfolding right underneath its massive nose.

Though parts of the audience weren't so enthused, most were under the spell themselves, at least a little. Because… _Merlin_ but she was _cute_. Cuter than any regular little girl dancing in front of a Dragon should have been. This was Veela magic alright, and not unintentional either. Gabrielle's charms were very much calculated. Even Ron, amused and charmed at first (she imagined that, as the protective older brother of a sister who had once been Gabrielle's age, he must be the ideal target for her magic), grew more and more restless as the girl's silent dance went on and on.

"Right, okay," he said, taking back his spot as commentator, "so Delacour is using Veela magic to hypnotize everyone, and, er, that's nice and all, but what about the defeating the bloody Dragon?"

It had obviously been more rhetorical a question than anything, but at this precise moment, Gabrielle seemed to answer him in action, abruptly finishing her number with a sharp _nod_ — and a tap of her pure-white yew wand on the nose of the Romanian Longhorn.

" _Imperio_ ," said Gabrielle in a marvelously innocent, sing-song voice.

She then snapped the fingers of her free hand as though ordering a dog, and motioned for the entirely tamed beast to roll on its side. It did.

The Beauxbâtons Champion sauntered into the crack in the stone and quickly flew out of it in bird form, a golden, rub-set wand in her right talon. She needed no assistance to leave the arena, nor did she bother to make any sort of claim — she simply landed at Viktor Krum's side on the Judges' platform, a dazzling smile illuminating her youthful face. Her departure from the arena was sounded with careful applause, few in the audience being quite sure what they had just witnessed — except a contingent of bizarrely handsome men and women, sitting by the Bauxbâtons section of the crowd, and who, Hermione belatedly realized, had to be Veelas themselves. The minute Gabrielle left the magical field keeping the Dragons caged in the arena, the Longhron came to its senses and dumbly returned to its earlier spot.

"I don't think the wand is it either," volunteered Hermione.

"Agreed," said Monroe. "Alright, my turn then."

"Correct, Miss Monroe," conceded Dumbledore in the Sonorus-amplified voice of the master of ceremony. "You may engage with whichever Dragon you please, but once again, and on Mr Charlie Weasley's behalf, I implore you to be careful not to let it come to any harm. Ladies and gentlemen… the Lady Helen Monroe, the First Champion of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

" _Sonorus_ ," Monroe cast on herself, allowing her to answer while addressing the whole audience, and without having to strain her vocal chords."Thank you, Professor Dumbledore. I assure you and the rest of the Jury that I have no intention of causing more bloodshed than is strictly necessary, nor of breaking the rules of the Tournament if it can at all be avoided. Despite continued attempts by certain parties to malign me and my followers, Lord Grindelwald and I have only good intentions for mankind. Tirelessly, I work for a world where—"

"I would also like to remind the First Hogwarts Champion," Judge Grindelwald cut in, rubbing at his temple, "that I am not a Lord, that this is not a political rally for her to make speeches, and that she has a Dragon to defeat."

"Of course, my Lord," said Monroe.

Denied her speech, the blonde girl didn't waste any more time with theatrics; she straddled the closest broomstick, flew down, and began to curse at the nearest Dragon, who happened to be none other than the fat Common Welsh Green. She drove it away from the spot it had been guarding, revealing yet a third crevice in the black stone ground, and continued harassing it with curse after curse — none of them lethal to such a magically-resistant creature as a pureblooded Dragon, but all of them fairly ghastly.

"Merlin's socks… there isn't one spell she's casting that's not Dark Magic!" commented Ron, not without dismay. "I mean, it _would_ take that to get through a Dragon's carapace, but — sheesh!"

Though this particular Common Welsh Green didn't seem like an aggressive sort (perhaps it had been guarding a Gringotts Vault that no one had ever tried to rob, and s had grown complacent), it did end up losing its temper at long last, and breathed a long stream of white-hot Dragonfire at the Hufflepuff. She made no effort to dodge, but, to everyone's surprise, when the fire and smoke dissipated, she was as unharmed as if the wyrm had used but Bluebell flames. The same could not be said of her broomstick, reduced to ash, but only the top layer of her robes had been burned away; her shoes, wand, and obsidian brooch were unharmed, and the burned fabric had revealed what looked like…

"Full-body Dragonhide armor!" shouted Ron. "That is _so_ cheating! I mean, not really. But — oh — and I suppose she must have drunk some sort of fire-proof potion before the Task… Well, I mean, I can't fault someone for being prepared, but… Okay, so what will the Dragon do n-n-n…uh?!"

Like the rest of the audience, Ron, takeing his eyes way from Monroe, realized that the Dragon she had been fighting had collapsed on its side, snoring loudly.

It took Hermione little time to figure it out. Even as the monster fired its cursed flames at her, the young Dark Witch had thrown a fireproofed phial of Draught of Living Death into its open jaws.

Monroe, practical as ever, was in and out of the cave in a blink, bringing back yet another artifact — a leather-bound grimoire with a golded edge. An embodiment of magical knowledge, the very thing that was being tested in this Tournament — clever. Yet it still didn't sound quite right to Hermione.

"I claim victory," she shouted, and was, like Krum before her, flown up by the ankled.

She arrived on the Judge's platform panting and disheveled, heedless of the audience currently giving her cautious applause. Uncertainly, Monroe walked closer to the Judges' chairs, running a hand through her hair to smooth it — her fingers closed around her obsidian brooch —

— and she lunged at Judge Grindelwald, holding it forward like a weapon.

" _Was ist_ —?!"

The old warlock tried to avoid the collision, but trapped as he was between the large chairs of his fellow Judges, he could do nothing to stop Monroe from touching the enchanted stone to his chest. The moment it connected with him, there was a _CRACK_ , and Judge, Dark Lady and brooch disappeared into thin air.

An illegal Portkey.

"…They should have seen it coming," Hermione commented bleakly.

There were a few moments of awkward silence.

Just when it seemed the audience was going to start an uproar, a hoarse, magically-amplified male voice erupted from the Sentient Object section of the stands, a little to the left of Goldie the Griffin. The Sorting Hat.

"Well then, ladies and gentlemen!" said the Hat, sounding quite satisfied with this turn of event somehow. "Hogwarts apologizes for the inconvenience; the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament will resume presently. Heheh. Heheheh. But in the meantime, don't worry, entertainment will be provided, at no extra cost!"

"Oh no," muttered Hermione. "Oh _no_."

But there was nothing for it; overjoyed at the largest captive crowd in its long history, the Sorting Hat… the Sorting Hat began to _sing_.


	79. Wesley Vainglorious

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _…I hope for your sake that I'm wrong, but I felt as I was writing that this chapter just wasn't very good. Please tell me I'm wrong. …Oh well, with so many chapters, it's unavoidable that you'd get a couple wrong in the end. (*cough* Rowling *cough* Epilogue) The next one will be better, at any rate. Promised. Right! Thanks to all who support the story already; if you're new here and just catching up then hello, glad to have you; please review; and… here we go!_

 **Chapter 74: _Wesley Vainglorious_**

The Sorting Hat may have been one of the greatest living Legilimenses on Earth, a priceless artifact, and a jolly good friend when you got to know him, but he was also one of the poorest singer-songwriters in the Wizarding World, and by the third couplet in the _Ballad of the Triwizard Six_ he was improvising, hexes, curses and rotten fruit (sometimes all three) were being hurled at him from all sides. Unfortunately for everyone's eardrums, an Artifact of the Founders as priceless as he was under no small amounts of protective enchantments; he had once boasted that even if the Dark Lord of the Death Eaters were to set him on fire, he would not suffer any permanent harm. The one sorcerer who could possibly have put an end to the discord screeching, namely Albus Dumbledore, was at the moment otherwise engaged. (Namely, trying to trace the magical signature of Monroe's Portkey to figure out where she'd taken her captive 'master'.)

"This is lame," said Wesley Weasley ruefully.

"Aside from the fact that the Hat doesn't have any legs," Hermione answered with mock-bitterness, "I'd be inclined to agree. Minerva told me about a poet ancestor of hers who was quite bad, a Mr William McGonagall, but… this is on a whole other level, I'm afraid."

"No, I mean, this is delaying my big moment!" Wesley corrected her, stomping like a child throwing a tantrum, which is, of course, precisely what he was. "I'm the Boy Who Lived, for Merlin's sake! I'm going to battle the Dragon and it's going to be awesome and everyone is going to love me even my stupid stinking sisters with their stupid gossip and— _OW_!"

"Thank you, Hedwig," Hermione thanked the avian Champion, who had so very thankfully just bitten at the Second Hogwarts Champion. "You're very helpful."

"Hoot," said Hedwig, contented, as she perched herself on Hermione's shoulder.

The girl knew it was a very great honor from the Post Owl, who usually reserved it only for her beloved Harry. Even Ginny had not yet earned it from her, and Ron and Hermione had only received it a handful of times so far.

Hermione suddenly had an idea.

She leaned down and whispered a suggestion — just a suggestion — to Hedwig.

With a _chitter_ that needed no Babble-Book to be translated into a chuckle, the snowy owl took flight, and, having reached the stands, made a beeline for the Hat, who presented quite a lone target, as even his fellow animated constructs, who had up till then been sitting around him, had drawn away from the song. The unceremoniously picked him up and carried him into the sky, with him still singing all the while.

" _And so it comes to this/An arena of glory_ ," the Hat sang as he he was carried further and further from view, " _There's nothing as amazing as/This here-unfolding storyyyyeeeEEEH?_

Finally, with that last held note, the Hat realized quite where he was.

"Put me down! Put me down this _instant_ , you—!… _you_ —! This is my _moment_!"

Hedwig flew the poor hat around in circles for a while before deciding to take him back to the Champions' Platform, where she dumped him in Hermione's hands.

" _Miss Granger_!" sputtered the Hat. "I _demand_ that you make that unruly fowl take me back to where I belong! I am making _art_ over here, for heaven's sake!"

"Hush, Hat," she shushed him, "there are more important things afoot. Not least of which the kidnapping of Gellert."

"Oh, are you on first-name basis, now?" the Hat derided. "And might I ask what's brought this about? Oh, and! I almost forgot! Young lady, _why_ weren't you at the Sorting Feast, anyway? I had such a very good song this year! I waited for you!"

Hermione almost dropped the Hat in surprise.

 _Oh, of course…_

"Hat, I am… I am so sorry," she said, swallowing. "I would have written, except—"

"—except I don't have hands, yes, no need to put too fine a point on it."

"But so very much has happened… hasn't Albus told you _anything_?"

"Hah!" the Hat snorted in lieu of an answer. "When _does_ he tell _anyone_ anything?… Least of all me!… No, he even kept me away from his office, the bearded old fool, for all this summer! Why, I learned of the Tournament _after_ the _students_! In the evening, after the Sorting! That's how long he kept me hanging. …And I mean that literally! He'd put me on a coat rack! A _coat rack,_ can you imagine? The insufferable _fool!_ Why would he even—"

"Temper, Hat! Temper!" she tried to soothe him. "Your Voldemort is showing. And, not to be rude, but as to the 'why'… I think Albus had a very understandable reason for, er, shelving you. I'm… not saying he was _right_. But — well — if you _had_ known all the details of the Tournament, do you really think you could have stopped yourself from telling the students about them while you Sorted them?"

The Hat looked distinctly chastened.

"And you _know_ how Albus is with his little dramatic surprises," she said sympathetically.

"…I suppose you're right," admitted the Hat before straightening himself up. "Right! Okay then! What did I miss?"

"I broke the Statute of Secrecy and got taken to Azkaban and learned how to fly and got myself chosen as Champion of Hogwarts so they'd have to take me back here and Helen Monroe forced them to bring Grindelwald too and so we're jailed together in the Room of Requirement when not participating in the Tournament but that's okay because he's a lot nicer than he used to be when you get to know him in hindsight I can actually see what Albus sees in him and besides we used to have a weird telepathic link because of that time I almost died and had to get a new body so we already knew each other!"

…

This said at some speed.

Hermione was panting a little bit by the end of it.

But it seemed to have gotten the point across.

"…I see…" the Hat said simply.

"Hey! I-I'm interesting too!" protested Wesley.

"Hoot", said Hedwig.

"No, I mean it!" insisted the Weasley boy, stomping again. "Just the other day I managed to cast a Levitation Charm! That's interesting!… Hey! Hey! I'm the Boy Who Lived! _Pay attention to me!_ "

Hermione placed a very stern hand on the kid's shoulder.

"Wesley… this being spoken not as a fellow Champion but as the idiot who ever gave you a shot at fame… shut. Up. There are more important things going on than your spotlight-hogging."

" _There is nothing more important than my spotlight-hogging!_ " shouted Wesley. "I don't care if you don't like me! You're not cool at all you're a purple jerk who wants to steal all my fame and I hate you and I hate this stupid Mr Grindelwhatsit and _GRRR_! Just — just watch a real champion!"

At which point the wizardling _jumped_ off the Platform with one more groan of exasperation, completely forgetting to grab a broomstick — if he even knew how to fly one, which Hermione rather doubted.

"…!"

Now, had Hermione had the sort of presence of mind she admired in her friend Harry, she would have jumped after him in a heartbeat and flown him back up using her Unsupported Flight. Had she had Albus's mastery with a wand, she would have cast _Arresto Momentum_ at the falling body, and so saved him.

"…!"

Unfortunately, she was just Hermione, ever so good at thinking up clever schemes from her bed, and ever so bad at thinking in the line of fire. So she watched dumbly, horrified, for the few seconds that saw Ron and Ginny's cousin plummeting down into the arena…

"…!?"

…and stared a few seconds more when he hit the ground and _bounced_ back up with a comical sound effect. Wesley bounced a few more times before settling down, unharmed. With a victorious smile, he shouted something like: 'I KNEW THAT WOULD HAPPEN!'.

"Ooookay…" said Ron Weasley's voice, uncertainly, "it would appear that the second Hogwarts Champion, Wesley Weasley, has decided to, er, break all the rules and go in already, uninvited. Don't know how many points it's going to win him, especially what with two of the Judges being away, but er, let's see what he does in the meantime?… You may think that trick with the fall was neat, but I'm _pretty_ sure that was just sheer accidental magic. Which isn't cheating, granted, but it ain't going to earn him any favors from the Judges either. If you ask me, the real challenge here is to see how he's going to avoid getting himself killed."

Hermione could but agree with the assessment, even if she did find it a bit weird for a commentator to wear his every bias on his sleeve like that. Oh, well. Wizarding World. She was pretty sure Quidditch commentators were usually no better. Heck, Ron was probably modeling his own speech on Quidditch commentaries he'd heard, now that she thought about it.

Wesley, at any rate, didn't seem at all worried by what was being said about him; no doubt he was used to ignoring mean comments from family members. He seemed in no hurry to confront a Dragon, and instead strode to and fro, no doubt trying to look dashing, though in practice he looked every bit the eleven-year-old he was.

Finally, he came upon one of the firey beasts, though it seemed to be more of an "accidentally bumping into" sort of thing than actual intent to engage with it. Or at least, one _hoped_ it was only a momentary absence of mind that had made the second Hogwarts Champion commit this major faux-pas — for instead of engaging any of the three unfought Dragons still available, he seemed intent on nagging at the Longhorn again.

"It… occurs to me," said Ron, and it was not the commentator speaking, nor even really the Architect, but the schoolboy realizing he had made a mistake, "that we possibly should have arranged for the fought Dragons to be Portkeyed _out_ of the arena before we sent in the next Champion. Oooh bollocks. I don't even think there's a rule about this, but… oooh dear."

 _Oh dear indeed_ , thought Hermione. She could have spotted that loophole from a mile away. Not that there was any easy solution to it besides making it clear to the Champions that they weren't _supposed_ to attack a Dragon who'd already been vanquished, of course. Throwing around words like 'Portkey' were all nice and good, but making a Portkey with enough juice to transport a fully-grown Romanian Longhorn would have been as difficult as it would have been expensive… not to mention the paperwork.

At least the Longhorn was still in a condition to be fought — if she hadn't assumed there would be a rule against it as a matter of course, Hermione would, in Wesley's place, have gone for Monroe's Common Welsh Green, who was still stunned. But…

…while even more unfair, it would perhaps have been _safer_ for Wesley if he had picked the Welsh Green. Because the chief worry concerning Wesley at the moment _wasn't_ how many points he'd lose in the final tally — it was whether he'd get _eaten_.

Hermione, and the thousands of people in attendance, would have been of a mind to answer 'oh yes, absolutely' to that, as they watched on in morbid fascination. The boy, having finally realized quite where he was, had decided that the best and most heroic way to vanquish a Dragon was to… kick it.

He kicked it, again and again. It seemed that at any moment the Longhorn would rouse and swat him away like a mosquito with its thick, scaly tail. Or with one of those horrific paws of its, each of which was as large as Wesley Weasley himself.

But somehow he did not, perhaps because the 'damage', if you could call it that, was far too insignificant for the beast to even notice. Eventually Wesley stopped kicking, took a few steps back, and finally remembered he had a wand.

(The poor wand — it was quite short, but Hermione hadn't caught any more details than that — clearly hadn't seen very much use from its owner so far, and if he carried on like that, it didn't seem likely that it ever would.)

Wesley waved it uncertainly, though with unnecessary flourishes, and declaimed the full extent of his knowledge of wanded magic:

" _Wingardium Leviosa_ ".

The spell hit the monster's magic-resistant hide, rebounded, and came back to hit Wesley's own wand, which began to escape him. He reached for the hovering stick of wood, drawing uneasy laughter for those of the crowd who had begun to realize that as dangerous predicaments went, Wesley could just as easily have been standing next to a rock, for all the attention the Romanian Longhorn was ever liable to pay him.

Having regained control of his wand, Wesley cast again, with even less skill and even more flourishes.

" _Win! Gar! Dium! Lev! Io! SAAAH!_ "

 _Le-VIO-Sa, not Le-vio-SAAH_ , _you ungrateful git,_ thought Hermione, who was getting irritated by all this nonsense.

The miscast Levitation Charm sizzled its way out of Wesley's wand, hit the scales, rebounded at an angle, and finally disappeared, leaving a scorch mark on Wesley's impeccably-polished left shoe.

Nincompoopery of a similar sort went on for quite some time, with the Dragon still taking no notice. After a while Ron stopped even trying to comment; no one was listening anyway, being too busy jeering at the pitiful efforts of the wannabe Champion.

Throughout, the only remaining Judge, Madame Maxime, was watching Wesley's mishaps with increasing dismay. She was trying very hard to stay impassible, Hermione could tell, but Maxime seemed to have a very low tolerance for fools, and finally, just as Wesley was attempting to tug on his Dragon's immense tail a little bit, to see what would happen, she had enough.

The witch stood up abruptly, to her full half-Giant height, and shouted a word; it sounded French. It could have been a custom spell — or it could have been an imprecation that escaped her even as she cast wordlessly. Hermione wasn't sure. Either way, however, Wesley was remotely _yanked_ up from the arena and into the Judges' box by the irate Frenchwoman. He landed on his backside to thunderous applause.

Wesley, never one to refuse honors, whatever they were for, beamed at said applause and got up just so he could bow some more in thanks for the warm reception to what he clearly believed must have been a stunning performance, if it was so obvious to Maxime that he had won that nothing needed to be said.

Hermione waited a moment to see if Mme Maxime was going to say something, whether acknowledging that Wesley's attempt was over or scolding the young wizard. She did neither, instead turning her nose on him. Hermione shared a mischievous look with Hedwig.

Minutes passed. The crowd once again grew disinterested, and, therefore, restless. Merchants, conmen and other opportunists took the opportunity to make their way through the hanging stands, peddling whatever it was they peddled; here, it was Gilderoy Lockhart advertising his next book; there, a well-dressed Goblin advertising some political cause or others; elsewhere, Madam Puddifoot sold sweets, and a large number of men in hooded red robes handed out leaflets. She caught a glimpse of a shifty-looking wizard with a suitcase being punched off the stands by a Vampire he'd been speaking to; mid-fall, he opened the suitcase, which belched dark blue smoke and turned him into a vulture.

Elsewhere, of course, people were just bored.

Finally, there was a _CRACKING_ noise and a haggard Albus Dumbledore reappeared on the Judges' Stand, holding a large block of sparkling amber. Inside the block of amber was Helen Monroe, whose Dragon-hide armor was frayed and damaged, frozen with a sullen expression twisting her thin features. Sitting on the block, or, rather, clinging to it for dear life, was Gellert Grindelwald.

"…apologies for the delays," said Dumbledore in an exhausted voice as he began using some spell or other to melt away the amber. "Amelia, if you're in the… in the audience, you… would do well to notify the Obliviators… they must go to… to Birmingham… I'm afraid we left the city in a bit of a mess. Oh, and do tell them to be mindful of the green hedgehogs. They breathe fire."

The Headmaster stopped melting the amber as soon as it had reached Monroe's neck, refusing to let her hands free. A wise move, no doubt. She took the opportunity to turned to the still-somewhat-terrified Grindelwald.

"I'm so very sorry, my Lord," she said to him, in a very sincere tone.

" _Gotverdammerung!…_ " shouted Grindelwald suddenly, kicking the block of amber, which achieved precisely nothing at all. "For the! Last! Time! _I am not! Your Lord!_ And I have _no desire whatsoever_ for you to keep on with these absurd schemes of yours to set me free!"

"Understood, my Lord," Monroe answered, her face blank. "You have other plans. Very well."

"What? _No_!" said the warlock. "This isn't a matter of strategy! It's one of _morality_! I can't just—I'm not—"

"I will await your orders."

" _Gaah!_ "

"If I may," Dumbledore said, "I think it would be best if you would kindly go home now, Miss Monroe. You have done _quite_ enough."

With a flick of the Elder Wand, the sorcerer made the block of amber grow small stubby legs, and it carried the sullen Monroe mercifully out of sight.

" _Now_ …" Dumbledore said and a drew a deep breath, taking in the situation. "Ah, I see young Mr Weasley has not been kind enough to wait for the return of Gellert and I. A pity. We shall be forced to give him very low marks indeed."

"You would have done zat even eef you 'ad seen him, Albus," Maxime said wryly.

"The thought had occurred to me," chuckled Dumbledore. "But we'll get to that. For now, our audience has waited long enough, I think. Miss Granger, the floor is yours."


	80. A Performance

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _So in comparison to the last one, which I felt was rubbish as I was writing it (though thank you to all you reviewers who told me it wasn't), this one was very pleasant to write. …Does that mean that it's actually rubbish, for symmetry? Well, I dunno. But here it is. As usual, thank you to you all lovely people, and please review!_

 **Chapter LXXV: _A Performance_**

"Miss Granger, the floor is yours."

Hermione bowed slightly. She gave a pleasing smile, but her true mood was more complex by far. For one thing, she was watching the crowd. Grindelwald had advised her to do so, and she'd agreed that it was a good occasion to gauge the public's opinion of her… Quentin had done what damage-control he could through _The Other Paper,_ but there was always a risk that the Ministry-controlled _Daily Prophet_ would have managed to convince the British Wizarding population that she was a dangerous renegade in thrall to Grindelwald's old ideology. It would be instructive to see.

Not that she was overly self-conscious about what people thought of her. But political capital could be useful. It could sway the ruling at her trial, if she got one in the end. And if not — if the Weasley regime was just _too_ hard to reason with — then, well, she'd just have to engineer a revolution. Public support, in such an endeavor, could not be done without.

Much to her pleasure, most of the wizarding crowd seemed pretty eager to watch whatever great display of magic she would perform. Granted, they would probably have been excited for almost anybody, coming after the drudge of Wesley's attempts, but it was still a good sign. Not that there weren't a few sour faces. She spotted Madame Flamel; the woman had not smiled since her husband had been murdered, but she did watch her intently. Professor Umbridge, of course, was the very embodiment of the saying "if looks could kill". And hobbled close together were all the former Death Eaters save Snape, with Lucius Malfoy front and center, keeping calculatedly blank expressions which clumsily disguised seething hatred.

Among the nonhumans… well, Goldie turned his nose dramatically, but he would. The rest were cheering wildly, bless them. Peter the Dementor even gave her a _thumbs up_. In particular, there was a humble, _earthy_ row of stands close to the bottom, housing the few dozen snakes had been civilized enough to come (they _did_ get a few odd looks, but Hermione _had_ , before his untimely disappearance, succeeded in getting Fudge to grant serpents Being status, and anyone who read the newspaper knew it). Tsh, sadly, wasn't here; he was home with his mother and siblings, and she'd found no way to get them to Hogwarts in time. Neither was the Basilisk, for that matter. Had she had her old influence she could have maneuvered it, but the transport of a Basilisk across the Atlantic and into a crowded arena needed significant paperwork, of the sort which she hadn't even attempted to fill out, because Professor Umbridge would have arranged for its untimely destruction if she had. But Kaiser was here, and Apophis, and a great number of magical snakes from all over. Even the snake she'd met in the Forbidden Forest had apparently been persuaded to come. And all, from what she could read of their body language at this distance, couldn't have been more supportive. All save for… huh. There was a strange-looking, dark green snake of great size, who had coiled their body in the tense way of a predator watching a prey; the others were giving them a wide berth. She'd have to ask around about _her_ if she got the chance.

Having gotten what information she wanted, Hermione bowed again and jumped as gracefully as she could manage off the Champions' Platform, though she knew she couldn't possibly be a match for Gabby Delacour's display. She allowed herself to fall for a moment, then thought of her parents and called her magic to her, focusing it all around her like an invisible bodysuit holding her aloft. She lost all momentum and began to float.

That alone elicited a few stunned looks. Both newspapers had, of course, written extensively about Hermione's display of her Unsupported Flight at the Welcoming Feast, but most had no doubt assumed it to be some sort of trick. She was trusted to be amazing and bizarre, but not to _this_ extent.

 _Well, nothing wrong with showing off if you actually are as powerful as you're acting._

Another bit of snake wisdom, that. Intimidation was a weapon. Hermione got the feeling that the Turban had also, in his day, heard that lesson from the snakes he talked to — and heeded it all too well.

She thus executed a few pirouettes (to a chorus of "Oohs" and "Aahs"), and only then headed for the Dragon she had chosen. The Ukrainian Ironbelly. For she knew the beast. In fact, she had ridden it, once, beneath Gringotts. Perhaps it would remember her. Even if it didn't, she remembered _it_ , and such an edge was not to be overlooked.

Not landing just yet, she let herself hover about six feet from the waiting Dragon's meter-long head. It blinked at her repeatedly, squinting in the light; it seemed that it was still adjusting to daylight after so many years spent underground. It made some sense that it would be more affected than the other five; Ironbellies' eyesight, she had learned when reading up on Dragons in preparation for the Task, was much weaker than other Dragons to begin with. They had little red eyes, designed not for accuracy, but for _solidity_ — the eyes were the weak spot of most Dragons, but not Ironbellies, no-siree; the rock-hard rubies they had for eyeballs could withstand just as much as regular Dragonhide, both in terms of magic and in terms of sheer firepower.

No-go on the eyes, then; not that Hermione was planning too physical an attack.

If she even had to attack it. Would it let her ride it, once more? Wouldn't _that_ be awesome?

She flew two feet closer, and…

…the Dragon recoiled in fear.

Well, she could use this.

Closer, closer… The Dragon stepped back, again, and again, revealing the entrance to the cave that it was guarding… right, there, that was enough—

—just in time too.

The frightened Dragon reacted like any other frightened Dragon: by breathing copious fire at whatever was frightening it.

Hermione dodged effortlessly, flying _up_ like a helicopter to avoid the jet of white-hot flames. The Dragon looked around dumbly for a few moments, not realizing where she'd gone, allowing her to move all the way to the back of the beast, where she set to work Conjuring.

Weeks of requiring various things from the Room of Wonders had done wonders for her already-decent skill in this area of magic, since it was very much the same sort of mental concentration, which simply had to be joined with a bit more elbow-grease with a Conjuration compared to a Requirement. So it was rather painlessly that she imagined an immense lump of clay and cast:

" _Qerhetisis_!"

It was an Ancient Egyptian Pottery Spell, which Grindelwald had learned during his travels, long ago. It had fallen into disuse, as modern magical potters preferred to use real clay than the less durable stuff that Conjuration could produce; the difference between the ancient times, when pottery was an everyday commodity, and the modern day where it had somehow become something of a luxury item. But it could produce entirely arbitrary amounts of perfectly serviceable wet clay.

Grindelwald, in his day, had combined it with the life-giving spells he and Dumbledore had always been so good at, to create instant armies of Golems loyal to him.

Hermione wasn't even remotely on that level, but nor did she need to be. The plan she had worked out was a little less elegant, but it would do the trick. So she simply summoned into existence some _outrageous_ amounts of wet clay, a formless mass which Ihovered for a few moments above the tail of the confused Dragon. Just as the Ironbelly finally craned back its neck to figure out what was happening behind it, she let the mountain of clay drop into a heavy hill on the Dragon's tail. It tried to wriggle free, but didn't have the time to do so before Hermione cast again with all her strength:

" _Igneusgale Vocabo!_ "

The magnified Hot-Air Charm baked the clay within seconds, encasing the Ironbelly's tail in a big, solid, inescapable gangue of brick. It realized its situation and pitifully tried to drag itself away from this prison, but it held fast.

Hermione bet that Dragon wished it were a lizard right about now, that it might shed its tail.

…wouldn't that be an idea, actually? If she were to turn herself to experimental breeding… if you could make a hybrid of lizard and Dragon who could shed its tail and regrow it naturally, without having to resort to outrageous amounts of regenerative potion… Dragon meat, on top of being a delicacy in Goblin cuisine, was an ingredient in many a brew. You could make a pretty penny there. Something to keep in mind. Right now…

" _RAAAARGHHHH!_ "

…she had other things to worry about.

Having drawn out of reach of the Dragon's fire breath, let alone its swiping claws, she flew higher and higher and, once there, allowed herself to catch her breath. Okay, so far so good; all according was going to plan. She spared a smile for the audience, taking care to note how well she was doing; if she wasn't being entertaining enough, there were more flourishes in store that she could deploy. But no need. The sight of the bound, thrashing Dragon was enough to satisfy most and scare the rest.

Now came the harder part. She had to plunge back down, into the cavity, to collect her reward. This meant once again coming direct in the line of the fire of the Ironbelly. The difficulty was very much intentional, of course; she _could_ conceivably have pushed the Dragon even further and trapped it there, but that wouldn't have been very impressive, whereas here, having to dive right into the storm of fire and claw, she'd have another opportunity to showcase some quality wandwork.

It had been an interesting riddle, figuring out which spell would be most appropriate to this situation.

She could have made herself fireproof somehow, which would have had the benefit of looking quite epic when she dove headfirst into the flames; but then, she would have to cast the same spell on all of her clothes, _and_ her wand — no easy task, especially the wand bit, because casting on a wand was always tricky and required the use of a spare wand. Plus, Helen Monroe had used a variation of the same trick already, with her potion and her Dragonhide armor.

Or she could have used the Fire-to-Snake Spell to place the Dragonfire under her control. It would have fit her 'theme', such as it was, but been as needlessly complex as it would be dangerous — being that the Dragon would just keep spewing out more fire even if its earlier flames were taken out of its control. No _Ignidracos_ , then.

That left the option of a circular, magical shield encasing her; a sort of translucent magical bathyscaph. A mere spherical Shield Charm wouldn't do — no form of Shield Charm could withstand Dragonfire — but Grindelwald knew much better.

Hermione closed her eyes, pooled her magic around her, picturing a perfect sphere, and recited a long and flowery incantation in Medieval Albanian. Her wand moved to and fro with perfect geometrical regularity. When she opened her eyes, she was standing inside a bona fide Protection Orb, a transparent, starry bubble floating around her.

Of course, that couldn't withstand Dragonfire either. Not _quite_. So she added another spell, _Fianto Duri_ , to strengthen it. The glass-like surface of her glittering cage glowed a bluer hue and thickened.

"There."

The Protection Orb could float under its own power, so she cancelled her Unsupported Flight, the bottom of the sphere easily supporting her weight. She looked down, and made sure that the Dragon and its firey anger were still where she'd left them. Then, she took control of the sphere's movements and steered it down, down, down into the pit. She entered the flames, blur of flash of orange and yellow licking the outer surface of the Orb, which held fast. But then the Ironbelly _swiped_ at her with its huge right front claw, and the shock knocked Hermione off her feet inside the slowly descending bubble. Damnit! She hadn't counted with _that_! Why _hadn't_ she counted with that?!

{ _Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!_ _No, no, no,_ focus _, Hermione Granger,_ focus.}

Without even trying to get back on her feet (that would have been a pointless distraction), she tried to take back control of the sphere's movement. Her mind connected to the active magic. She could feel the Orb again. Good, good. Now to stabilize it…

Slowly, it stopped shaking.

She finished her descent into the crevice, too dark to see much of anything through the already murky surface of her Orb. But the worst was behind her. Slowly the Orb drifted down like a soap bubble, and to finish off, she let it 'burst' like one just as it hit the ground.

She took in her surroundings. She was sitting on wet stone, the cold moisture unpleasantly finding its way through the fabric of her robes. It was dark, but the smell of the place was familiar…

…oh, of course. Somewhere underground right below Hogwarts? Why _would_ they have bothered to dig something new?

She was in the Chamber of Secrets.

" _Lumos_."

Yes, that was the Chamber alright; it had been redecorated again, though nothing that couldn't be undone when the Basilisk returned home. On every wall were shelves bearing magical artifacts, many of which she recognized, some from her reading, others from having seen them in Albus's office, or on sale in Knockturn Alley. Others were knew to her. Others _seemed_ new, seemed to have been crafted right for the Tournament. There were only three empty spots, doubtless occupied by the artifacts Krum, Delacour and Monroe had picked.

What to pick? Now _this,_ of course, wasn't a bit that she and Grindelwald had been able to iron out. She'd _found out_ , more or less fraudulently, that Dragons would be involved, and easily guessed that they would have to be bypassed rather than defeated, but she hadn't expected to have to choose the prize. She'd assumed it would be something obvious. Probably not the Triwizard Cup (that would be kept for the Final Task, of course), but something fairly simple. A golden… egg, or something.

But no. Rows upon rows of enchanted doohickies, and an injunction to choose wisely.

Clever Ron.

"Hm… no… maybe?" Hermione hummed, taking in all the items.

Her predecessors had jumped to the flashy ones, but it wouldn't do to ignore the less photogenic ones. Not that it was likely the medieval veeblefetzer or the Roman fibula were the correct pick, mind you, but… ahah, was that a Triad Jewel? Triwizard Tournament — it would make sense. But the resemblance was only superficial. No, no.

So how about… oh dear, no. _That_ had almost bit her.

There was an egg there, actually, a golden egg. It did look like a Dragon's egg, so it was a possibility. She knocked on it experimentally. It sounded hollow. Maybe there was a tiny gold Dragon inside. Or a clue that would help with the next Task. Or possibly a complimentary Chocolate Frog — something edible couldn't be put past Ron, even in his capacity as the Triwizard Architect. But how to open it? You surely had to open it. And there was no obvious way short of sitting on it for a few days, like a hatching hen, which, no.

She discarded the Egg and continued rifling through the endless shelves. There were many lovely things here, and half of them made at least _some_ thematic sense as a prize for a Task of the Triwizard Tournament. Even the Iron Maiden. After all, what you rescued from a Dragon in the old stories _was_ a fair maiden, and that Iron Maiden _was_ painted white… Ron liked his puns sometimes, and Albus even moreso.

Once she was done examining everything, she laid herself down on the musty ground to rest and think.

It occurred to her that she hadn't gotten the chance to do that in ages.

She used to do it all the time when she was small — snakes did it and seemed to enjoy it, so why shouldn't she? Once she'd started going to school, however, well, she'd had to kick the habit. The kids — and the teachers — looked at her funny when she randomly laid herself down on the floor when she was thinking about a math problem.

Even among people who would have understood, she had lost the reflex and rarely done it again. Sometimes, in her room, during the holidays. Once or twice in Azkaban, she'd tried, but the floor was really too cold. That was it.

Here, though, was just about right. As well it should be. The Chamber of Secrets had been designed as the ultimate snake's den, one in which a Basilisk could slumber in piece for thousands of years. It was ideally suited to resting in that snakelike way. And best of all, it was secluded. No longer did she have to worry about the crowd watching her. They couldn't see her for now. Oh, she couldn't keep them waiting _too_ long, but as far as they were concerned, she was searching right now, not doing something socially unacceptable. Let them think that, the fools.

She basked in the feeling, and thought.

In the quiet, still darkness, her sense gradually became more acute. Smell first — the room had a waft of Mr Filch's usual cleaning potion superimposed with that of cold mossy stone; there was still the barest hint of the odor of rot that the Dementors had gotten into the place whilst they were staying there; and clearest of all was the scent of the Basilisk herself, which the ancient walls had had thousands of years to imbibe.

She missed her.

Then it was hearing. Far above her, the Ironbelly Dragon still roared and thrashed. Good. That would give the audience something to gawk at for as long as it took for Hermione to collect herself. There was a hint of a human voice — she couldn't make it out, and might have missed it if it had been any old voice, but it was Ron's, she could tell. He sounded confident enough. That, too, was good.

And there were…

…no, wait, that wasn't right.

There were voices…

…below.

There were voices coming from _below_ the Chamber of Secrets.

She couldn't make out what they were saying, but the voices were coarse, and deep, and they were getting closer.


	81. Shabang

**AUTHOR'S NOTE::** _You know how sometimes chapters just write themselves? This was not one of those chapters. Still, here we are. Welcome to all the new readers and thank you for all the lovely reviews! Send in more if you A) are an Alizor, B) are against the Wand Ban, or C) just want to support this story! Or, you know, any old reason furhter down the alphabet. And now, the main event!_

 **Chapter LXXVI:** _Shabang!_

The voices went on and grew louder with every passing moment. Hermione could make out words now — not English, and she didn't catch the whole sentences, but it was speech alright…

"… _gruh_ … _roglestrom nonvolarg weezarg-…!…_ "

"… _grak! Hak rack gronok snoksnargk!… gr…k…_ "

…and on second thought, she did recognize the language.

That was Algezorgok. The sister language to Gobledigook, spoken by the Alizors of Tomberag, the savage subterranean creatures who dwelled in Tomberag, beneath the Forbidden Forest. Hermione knew them well. She had encountered them back in Third Year, and been force to teach their king, Tolgar, some magic, though she had also deluded him about the true nature of most dangerous spells, only correctly teaching him spells such as the Wand-Lighting Charm. Through a bout of bad luck, Hermione and her friends had only escaped the Forest at the cost of leaving Neville Longbottom's wand in the hands of the Alizor King.

In hindsight, she should have been more concerned about that.

She really, really—

" _SHA-BANG!_ ", shouted one of the voices below her, and—

—and the black stones which had tiled the floor of the Chamber of Secrets for over nine centuries _exploded_ upwards below her in an explosion of crackling white-hot light. Her body was thrown upwards by the blast, and even before she could _process_ the information, she felt that several stones had hit her back and legs, and that the crackling light was _hot_ , hot, _burning_ —

—then she realized just how _high_ she had been blown by the explosion—she was already injured—no, no, no! happy thought, happy thought, she must _fly,_ fly—but what was happy about this? and the _pain_ —

—too late. She crashlanded, a limp and painful mess.

Not quite as painful, though, as it should have been if she'd hit the ruined stone floor. She mentally shook herself, and realized that as luck would have it, she had fallen back _onto_ an Alizor, likely the one who had cast that explosion spell in the first place and then climbed into the Chamber through the hole he had created.

She tried to catch her breath and was appalled by the ragged sound of it. How badly was she hurt? Her left hand (her right still held her wand) felt at her back. She mostly felt bare skin with a few ragged remains of her robes, and what damaged skin too — but it was skin — her body was already repairing itself. How much of it was a witch's natural resilience, and how much was the Acromantula blood running through her veins, she could not say. It was hardly the time to think too hard about these things.

She considered trying to stand, but a discordant chorus of rough male voices still coming from below indicated that there were many other Alizors, and they were no doubt going to follow the first one soon enough.

 _Trick #1 of being a snake when there are bigger and fiercer things about: play dead._

Soon enough, three, five, nine more helmeted, dirt-covered, pointy-nosed heads with small gleaming eyes and big toothy mouths poked up from the gash in the floor of the Chamber created by the first Alizor with… what, exactly? She had certainly taught no such spell to the Alizor King, but even more worryingly, it didn't look like _any_ curse she knew. What kind of incantation was ' _Shabang_ ', anyway?

As they came into full view, it became clear that they _were_ soldiers, outfitted for war and marching like it. They wore crudely-chiseled, but undoubtedly sturdy armor on their persons, where the Alizors she'd known hadn't worn any real clothing to speak of, let alone breastplates; at their belt were what looked like large daggers but must have seemed proportionally, like reasonably-sized cutlasses to the stout little humanoids.

And most strikingly, each man held in his hand a sharpened stick, almost identical to a wizard's wand, though the make was obviously less precise than what Ollivander had to offer. Some of the Alizors' wands were finer than others, which Hermione supposed make sense — whichever of their ranks had learned to make them must have improved with practice, but that was no reason to throw away the earlier prototypes, so long as they were functional.

At any rate, the nine Alizors moved with astonishing synchronicity as they took in the Chamber of Secrets. One tried to reach for an artifact — the Triad Jewel — but another barked an order, and this was enough for the wayward one to resume standing at attention. Having ascertained that there was a way upwards to the surface, the apparent leader said something else in Alizor-speech and the eight others immediately glommed onto the uneven walls and began climbing them with the lizard-like agility of beings who had spent their entire lives in caves and tunnels. Within instants, they were up the shaft and out in the arena above.

Hermione could only imagine the audience's reaction. No doubt most would assume this was simply another phase in the Task, albeit a rather unexpected one. If she had her Hogwarts curricula straight, there was a fair chance that whoever hadn't taken the Care of Magical Creatures didn't even _know_ that Alizors _existed_ — they were a fairly obscure race in the grand scheme of things, compared to the likes of Goblins or even Sphinxes.

Well, she couldn't well take that lying down.

Yet she had little choice but to keep lying down, absolutely still, for the moment, because the tenth Alizor, the Sergeant, or Lieutenant, or whatever he called himself, had yet to follow his men up to the surface. He was, instead, staring suspiciously at—

—well, at first, Hermione thought he was staring at _her_ , which gave her quite a pang in the heart, but she quickly realized that he was staring at the Alizor she had knocked out by falling on top of him.

The Sergeant finally ambled closer to the two sprawled body, hers and the soldiers, and bent down to get a closer look, no doubt meaning to ascertain the state of his comrade, and, if possible, wake him up so that he wouldn't miss the _whole_ glorious battle between Alizorkind and Wizardkind.

Hermione saw her chance, took it—and, when the Sergeant's face got close enough to hers, poked him in the eye.

He recoiled with a roar, and she took the opportunity to fire a Stunner at him. It him squarely, but he appeared mostly unaffected, so she fired another, which made his knees wobble a little. Not having all the time in the world, she topped it off with " _Petrificus Totalus_ ". The Alizor froze in such an unnatural stance that it toppled like a badly-made tin soldier and fell backwards into the hole in the ground.

At last, Hermione dared to get up. To her relief, she could do so without much trouble; she still had some bruising and scratches on her back and thighs, but nothing at all serious. She inspected the body of the Alizor who had been serving as her extremely grimy pillow. He didn't seem too badly hurt.

Which, honestly, was a problem.

After relieving him of his pseudo-wand, Hermione hit him with another Body-Bind Curse and kicked him into the chasm to follow his superior. He disappeared into the dark hole and hit the bottom with a most satisfying (but not too dangerous-sounding) noise.

"…and _stay_ down," she shouted after him, though it was probably superfluous.

She fashioned herself another protective sphere and steered it upwards to chase after the other Alizors. She emerged out of the cave and into the light to find the Alizor platoon had not gotten yet very far, nor indeed hindered by any wizard; they were struggling to stay upright as they covered their eyes with their clawed hands.

Of course… The sunlight… Subterranean creatures such as these weren't used to it. _Stupid King_ , Hermione thought, _he can learn wandlore, but thinking of a nightly attack? Way beyond him._ At least it meant they hadn't yet noticed she was back.

But…

…what were the Alizors doing now? They pointed their makeshift wands at pebbles, and barked words — no, _incantations_ — in their language as they waved the sticks.

 _Transfiguration_.

The Alizors… the Alizors were now wearing sunglasses.

Not quite sunglasses; the roundels of tinted glasses had no rim, no branches — the Alizors merely stuck them in their large eye socket, where they remained stuck thanks to the layer of mud covering every inch of the Alizors' elephant-like skin. But the effect was every bit as ludicrous as if the invaders had suddenly put on shades. Not that it wasn't a very practical solution to their problem.

It also, Hermione reflected, spoke volumes about the level to which the Alizors, through sheer trial and error it seemed, had mastered magic once they had had access to a wand. She still disagreed with the Wand Ban morally, mind, but she could now see, with more clarity than the books she'd read on Wizarding History had ever managed, just how strategically vital it was to the continued Pax Romana enforced by Wizardkind over their nonhuman neighbors.

And there was more.

Now that they were able to take in their surroundings, the Alizors realized that they were, in fact, in the middle of an arena full of Dragons. Yet they did not appear cowed. One of their number simply took a few steps back and shouted a question into the mouth of the pit. Hermione opened the Babblebook, and saw that he was calling for his lieutenant. There was, of course, no answer. But then, after a moment's hesitation, the Alizor said something else.

Something—

Hermione blinked several times at the Babblebook, and even gave it an experimental tap from the tip of her wand, worried that its vocabulary charm banks might be malfunctioning.

But the words remained the same.

' _Alright, I'm taking command,_ ' the Alizor had said. So far so expected. But then: ' _Come on up, you lot! And make it snappy!_ '

A strangled squeak escaped from Hermione's constricting throat. There were _more_?! … _How_ _many_? Her gaze turned to the stands; she had flown high enough that she was about halfway between them and the ground, and so she could clearly see most of the audience. As she had predicted, most were puzzled, but nowhere near as worried as the situation warranted.

On the Judges' Stand, Albus was struggling to get a good view of the situation, blocked from stepping closer to the edge by none other than Professor Umbridge, whose hysterical shrieks of ' _Kill them! Kill them!_ ' were audible even from where Hermione was standing. Madame Maxime had risen to her full height and seemed frozen in shock. As for Gellert… he seemed as though he desperately wanted to do something but wasn't sure if that was okay in his legally awkward position.

Eventually, Dumbledore managed to push Umbridge aside, and came to the front of the stand. He leant down, looking the Alizors' new de-facto leader in the eyes even at such distance — it was a skill that came naturally to old teachers, he'd told Hermione once.

" _Jark! Argh yeck ingrhuckksh ab-weezarghzz?_ " he said in what was clearly Algezorgok, though Dumbledore, even now, couldn't force his voice to become as roaring and coarse as an Alizor's, nor abandon the soothing cadence of his spoken English.

Hermione looked down at the Babble-book to check what her friend and mentor had said, though she could guess.

' _Speak! What do the Alizors want with us Wizards?_ "

The chief Alizor stood there, searching for his words, while more and more of his kind spilled out of the gap in the Earth and massed themselves behind him. All of them bore crude wands identical to the one Hermione had already examined. She noticed none of them looked female — it might have been too much to expect Alizors to be any less sexist than Goblins, she realized. Although it could just as well be that there _were_ Alizor women among the soldiers, and they simply lacked most secondary sexual characteristics known to humans.

But good God, there were many of them. A quick head-count of the pointed helmets yielded… a hundred? More perhaps. Certainly no less.

Finally the chief Alizor spoke, and Hermione realized that the reason he'd been so long choosing his words was that he meant to say it in English. Horrible, broken, Alizor English. But, of course, she couldn't blame it on this particular Alizor, in particular. If it was the King who had taught his troops, it was hardly their fault; in fact, she had little doubt that the old tyrant wouldn't have looked kindly upon a subject of his speaking English _better_ than he did.

"No need, you _weezargh_ of speaking bad our tongue!" crowed the Alizor. "We learn you, like you our tongue learned has! _Harh_! But what want? What with _weezarghz_ wants?…" He paused, for dramatic effect, then raised a fist and shouted: " _WAR!_ "

Dumbledore stilled. The four Aurors surrounding the Judges' Stand — there were two Hermione didn't know, but the others, the ones closer to Dumbledore's size of the box than Umbridge's, were clearly Shacklebolt and Tonks — advanced, but Dumbledore stopped them with a gesture and said to them:

"No, may yet be reasoned with."

He then fished around in one of his big, bright yellow coat's purple-trimmed pockets and withdrew a small bag — no, a _mokeskin pouch —_ and from its dimensionally transcendental contents, a fully functioning broomstick.

"I _say!_ " said Umbridge. "Headmaster! You cannot — you can't just —"

Dumbledore's wand _twitched_ , and Umbridge suddenly lost her voice. Still fuming, she gestured silently at Dumbledore before turning to Barty Crouch Snr., putting a hand on each of his bandaged shoulder and shaking him back and forth as if to help him understanding the inaudible words pouring out from her pink-lipstick-caked mouth. The human mummy let her do so and, when she finally stopped, gave her a sort of helpless shrug and an incomprehensible mumble.

By then, Professor Dumbledore had landed. In what Hermione guessed to be an intentional show of power, he had done so a few feet away from one of the Dragons — only the Romanian Longhorn, granted, but it was still a sight — and he patted its muzzle reassuringly before striding closer to the horde of Alizors.

Hermione knew the face he was making: it was that of the stern but fair teacher, the kind of face he wore when he was trying to say: ' _you are in the wrong, but as I am a kind old man, I may yet be persuaded not to punish you, if you say sorry_ '.

He outstretched his arm, but, she noticed, with the Elder Wand still held firmly in his right hand — this made him look rather like a conductor just before the orchestra started playing. No music came, though; just words.

"Alizors," said Albus, "I shall not claim ignorance of the many reasons your people may have to want to rise up against Wizardkind. I wish that I could tell you that you are wrong, and that we are right; that I could proclaim our innocence and your wickedness; that I could say there is nothing for this war to avenge. But I cannot."

The Alizors looked at him curiously, but didn't seem moved by his words, one way or the other. Perhaps only the leader understood English, Hermione realized. Though the leader's face was just as unreadable.

"And I wish," the sorcerer continued, "that I could, in good faith, say there is nothing for Alizorkind to gain if this war of which you dream is successful, that I could insist that there is nothing for you to conquer. But here you stand, among the rocks and the beasts, while we mages stand on high…" He gestured at the floating stand, at the mass of the flying Castle Hogwarts overhead, "And the shadow of the very bastion of our power hovers over you, _quite_ literally. To say your lot is fair would be untrue, and to say you have nothing to gain would be a crime."

Again Dumbledore paused. His wand didn't leave his right hand, but he extended the left towards the Alizors, as if asking any one of them to take it.

"So I am reduced to what you would call a threat," he said in a methodically pained tone, not insincere as such, but measured and practiced all the same, "though I mean it only as a warning from a man who wishes things were not so. I do not know what magics you have discovered, and I would love nothing more but to study them even as I taught you the magics _we_ have devised."

He certainly wasn't lying _there_ at least. Hermione herself was itching to learn more about the strange new spells and incantations the Alizors had worked out based on her incomplete lessons, and Albus was much more of a magical scholar than she ever was.

"But whatever you have learned in a few months, however wonderful," Dumbledore exhorted them, " _cannot possibly_ stand against the ten thousand wizards encircling you now. Attack, and you will be _slaughtered_. Others have tried before you… your brothers the Goblins… and I know you think yourselves better than them, as they think themselves better than you, but just think. Six thousand able-bodied Goblins took part in the last Goblin rebellion, all of them armed with illegal wands, just as you are. They had been planning it for ten years, and they were not so foolish to start their attack from a low ground encircled by a mass of wizards, six Dragons, and, if I may say so, any man of power equal to my own."

He paused again, and stated the obvious.

"They lost."

He gave his audience another heavy look; he glanced up at Hermione in her bubble, who, taken a little bit aback, forced herself to give him a reassuring smile, though she knew the second she plastered it on her face that it probably didn't look all that convincing.

"I say, do not die for a hopeless cause, when it may yet be won in less brutal ways," Dumbledore concluded. "Give me those wands, those marvelous creations of yours; for safekeeping, shall we say, for I promise I shall give them back to you, in time; because as long as you hold them, the law being the law, your ownership of them spells your doom. Give me the wands, and I shall bring a thousand more back to you, with no blood spilt. That is my offer to your people… as the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, as the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot… and as as close to a friend as your people ever had among wizards. What say you?"

Dumbledore said at last.

The Alizor Leader, his expression still blank, raised his wand, held it towards Dumbledore. Was he casting, or…? Dumbledore reached forward just an inch, hesitant; his hand opened itself just a little more—

The Alizor then jerked his wand forwards as if stabbing someone, and shouted:

" _SHABANG!_ "


End file.
